


Tumblr Prompts

by Sasskarian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect Trilogy, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 38,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasskarian/pseuds/Sasskarian
Summary: Tumblr prompts, challenges, ficlets





	1. August Challenge: Day 1 - Shameless Fluff (Cullen/Inquisitor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen was not very lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter Title:** Normal is Overrated

Day 1 - **Shameless Fluff  
**

Pair: Isera/Cullen

Timeframe: Post-Trespasser;  **AU**

Disclaimer: Given our, uh, guest stars, I’m 99.9999999% sure this is AU, and is not– repeat, NOT– part of the official canon for LSotA.

Guest Starring: The Hero of Ferelden, The Champion of Kirkwall, and old friends

***

* * *

***

“Have I mentioned lately that I hate you?”

Cullen’s voice cut through the chatter of the house with practiced ease. Valira hesitated, slowly lowering her mug of coffee as her eyes darted from her husband– lounging against the wall, looking entirely too at ease– to her old friend– slumped over the table, nose almost in his own cup of coffee, hands buried in his wild curls. Cullen’s wife chuckled, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms with a faint, mechanical whir.

“Don’t worry, my love, I hate you, too,” Isera said agreeably. “Did you forget the rules we made when this all started?”

Cullen groaned, sounding barely alive. Zevran caught Val’s eye from across the table, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“One parent on duty, one parent sleeping.”

He groaned louder, managing to draw the sound out impressively. Val smiled, trying to hold back her laugh as she finally drank her coffee.

“If you keep carrying on like that, the dogs are going to start howling. And then  _you_ can explain to Varric why he’s fielding more noise complaints from our house.”

“But he’s already warned us,” Cullen started, lifting his eyes– Valira had to hide a laugh  at the woebegone look on his face. The last time he’d looked so pitiful, he’d been begging her for a warmth rune to stick under his covers in the dormitories. “He muttered something about sending  _Hawke_  to deal with it next time.”

“And if you don’t want Marian corrupting your perfect little darling,” Isera snickered, “then you’ll have to stop whining.” She stood, hesitating just a moment as she caught her balance with her prosthesis, then leaned over and to give her husband a smacking kiss on the forehead. “Now Valira and Zevran are going to accompany me to the market, and then we’re going to stop in and see Varric, and maybe if you’re  _very lucky_ , I won’t invite him back for dinner.”

***

Cullen was not very lucky.

He never really had been, he mused, watching as their kitchen– a fairly good size for a manor in Kirkwall– overflowed with people. Marian Hawke– the bane of his Gallows days, at times, and now an uneasy friend– winked at him from across the table, her boots crossed at the ankle on the corner. Varric sat next to Cullen, shuffling a battered deck of cards that looked like something the dog would have dragged out of Gallows Bay and laughing at something the tiny, dark-haired elf (who’d slipped around Hawke and tackled his wife, and wasn’t  _that_  a shock) whispered in his ear.

Next to Hawke and looking very unimpressed with the goings-on sat her brother. Cullen had so far managed to avoid Carver’s eyes, but the tension crackling between the former Templars would come to a head eventually. On Hawke’s other side, and if that wasn’t a disaster just  _waiting_  to happen, Dorian– supposedly on an ambassadorial mission from the Magisterium but actually just misusing his political power (in the best way) to come to the Free Marches– sat with the youngest Rutherford on his lap, grinning like a fool and making exaggerated pained noises when she reached up and grabbed his mustache.

It was almost worth the headache that would surely erupt before the night was through to hear the sharp noises of glee his daughter made as she clambered over the formerly-unruffled Tevinter mage.

“Bela, if you don’t stop flirting with Zevran, I will show you the meaning of frigid women,” Valira said companionably, perched on her husband’s lap.

“But sweet _thing_ ,” Isabela purred, resting her hand on Val’s knee with a mostly-teasing lecherous grin, “don’t you remember our… meeting on the Siren? You weren’t complaining then.”

At Cullen’s elbow, Isera laughed softly, resting her good arm on his shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she leaned up and brushed her lips across his. “Our family’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” she asked him quietly.

“Let’s see.” Cullen rested his chin on his palm, pretending to think. “We have the Inquisitor, the Hero of Ferelden, an Antivan Crow–”

“Former!” Zevran called.

“– _former_  Antivan Crow,” Cullen amended. “The Champion of Kirkwall–”

“Also former!” Hawke laughed uproariously at Cullen’s glare, almost tipping over when he shot her a rude gesture. “What?!”

“–a notorious pirate, the  _Viscount of Kirkwall_ , an elven apostate, a Tevinter Magister, and two former Templars.” He hummed under his breath, watching the happiness in his wife’s eyes. This bubble of peace, tentative as it was, was only a temporary reprieve from the world outside their door. Solas was still missing, elves were still disappearing, the Magisterium still wouldn’t hear them out. There would always be another war to fight somewhere…

But not for them.

Cullen leaned forward, brushing his knuckles against Isera’s cheek, every doubt and past transgression and fear of the future fading as he met her mouth in a kiss so achingly sweet, it took his breath away. The soft sound she made as her fingers curled in his hair was both a promise ringing between them and a reminder of how far they’d come. When he finally pulled back, the half-dazed smile on Isera’s face and the knowing chuckle from Val– somewhere on his right– made him grin.

“Our family  _is_  a bit weird,” he finally agreed, contentment settling across his heart the way their giant mabari laid across his feet at night. “But when have we ever been normal?”


	2. August Challenge: Day 2 - A Rarepair (Carver/Anders)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Carver kissed him was an accident. More or less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not claim credit for the idea of Carver smuggling mages out of the Circle. I don't know who originally came up with the idea, but I attribute my inspiration to the lovely Khirsahle and I beg you to go read their marvelous Voice-verse!
> 
> **Chapter Title:** What Comes Next

Day 2 - **A Rarepair**

Pair: Carver/Anders

Timeframe: All over, tbh. Acts 1, 2, and 3

***

* * *

***

The first time Carver kissed him was an accident. More or less.

Long days at the Gallows, with the Knight-Captain half-asleep on his feet and going entire halls out of his way to avoid looking at mages, with Meredith’s screeching voice echoing out from her office where she was shouting at Orsino again, with the way his sister blithely tripped through the Gallows as though she weren’t an apostate daring them to catch her— it wore a person down.

And of course, Anders was no help, going on and onabout his  _bloody_  manifesto and the evils of the Templars— heedless of the Templar standing in front of him, no less— when all Carver Hawke wanted was two minutes of peace and quiet so that his pounding headache would go  _away._

“And you!” Anders rounded on Carver, one long, thin finger perilously close to Carver’s teeth.

“Me?” Carver tossed his scabbard aside and faced the mage, teeth gritted. The ache in his head grew worse until he could feel it pulsing in his jaw, crawling down his neck and igniting fury in its wake.

“After all our talks, Carver!” Anders sounded hurt almost, and if that wasn’t  _ridiculous_. “After knowing me for how many months, you ran off to be a  _Templar!_ ”

“I—”  _Why bother_ , came the whisper in his mind.  _No one sees me past Sister anyway._  “That’s—” Carver’s fists clenched at his side, struggling with the desire to forcibly rearrange the mage’s sanctimonious, self-righteous, I’m-the-only-one-who-sees-the-suffering-of-mages face. Marian had threatened to gut him if he got into another shouting match with Anders— not that it was enough to stop him.

“Do you honestly think,” Carver snarled, stepping forward into Anders’ space, “ _you_  are the only one who sees the— the  _plight_  of mages?”

“Well,  _you_  certainly don’t care!” Anders spat back, not backing down; the front of his robes brushed the flaming sword of the Templars engraved on Carver’s breastplate. “You’re a  _Templar!_ ”

Carver let out a roar of frustration, fisting his hands in the mage’s robes and backing him against the wall. His chest heaved as he struggled to breathe, to control his temper. “My family is full of  _apostates,_ mage _!_  Or did you  _forget_  that?”

Anders blinked, his hands wrapped around Carver’s as if he were going to pull them off and had forgotten. For the first time in months, Anders looked at him and seemed to actually  _see_  him, finally. Past the Templar plate armor, the broadsword, and the duty-hardened planes of his face to see  _him._

“I am keeping my only living sibling safe by providing a  _distraction_  every time she goes skipping through Templar Central _,_ ” Carver said, holding on to his self-control by his fingertips. Violence shivered just under his skin and Anders— the mage— the  _apostate_  was always been quick to dig for it, to burrow in and then needle at him and if he wasn’t so Maker-forsaken  _annoying_ —

Punching the man, again, would only piss Marian off, and asking nicely never worked; it only put his hackles up because oppression this and mage rights that. “I have spent my  _life_  protecting mages, even if it isn’t to your lofty standards.”

“I don—”

“Shut up,” Carver growled, pressing forward and shutting Anders up the only way he could. His heart stuttered when Anders went almost boneless against him, their mouths tangled together and his hands still fisted in the man’s robes.

As far as kisses went, it wasn’t perfect— their teeth clacked together, the angle was all wrong, and then there was the fact that  _Carver Hawke_  was kissing  _Anders_  and if there wasn't a hole being ripped in space and time somewhere, he’d go to a Chantry service for the first time in twelve years. And yet...

He hadn’t counted on  _enjoying_  it. On the rasp of the other man’s stubble against his chin, of the strangely gentle press of lips, of fingers burrowing into his messy Hawke curls and  _pulling._  Of the way Anders scrabbled at his shoulders, a long, winding sigh rolling out of his mouth and into Carver’s, of his fingertips going first cold then staticky with magic as the kiss deepened far beyond whatever he’d intended. If he’d intended anything at all.

There was a moan tangled in there somewhere as Anders arched closer, his hips rocking against Carver’s and his mouth slanting open. Lifting the smaller man was easy as breathing— some distant part of Carver’s mind realized that the mage— his mage?— was working himself ragged, dropping weight too fast to be healthy— and he gasped as Anders wound his long legs around Carver’s hips and pulled him flush. It was easy to brace one hand against the wall, to let Anders cling to him as he wound his other through long, tangled hair and tugged to take control again.

It was easy to—

Kissing Anders was easy. Kissing  _Anders_  was  _easy._

Some part of Carver’s rational brain surfaced beneath the waves of heat and asked,  _What am I_ doing?

Anders made a soft noise of protest as Carver jerked away, his lips tingling and still tasting like the mage. His self-control wasn’t helped by seeing Anders’ pupils blown wide with pleasure. Somewhere far away, far removed from the moment that just happened, he could hear Orana humming to herself as she dug through Marian’s larder. He could hear the raggedness of Anders’ breathing, the sounds of Bodahn in his office, the click of mabari nails on the hardwood floor.

“What…” Anders licked his lips nervously, his eyes still wide and shocked— Carver fought against the swell of need that curled through his belly as he watched Anders’ tongue and let the mage slide to the floor, sagging against the wall. “What was  _that_?”

The question echoed in Carver’s head, too. What the hell was that? He didn’t even like Anders. Why was a meaningless kiss affecting him like— like—

...like he  _wanted_?

Without answering him, Carver grabbed his sword and left, sternly telling himself all the way back to the Gallows that he wasn’t running away. 

He was  _not_.

***

“On your left, mage!” Carver grunted with effort as he yanked his sword from the torso of a slaver— honestly, why his sister kept that  _fugitive_ around, all he did was bring them trouble—

The lack of answer, smartass or not, from Anders’ side of the alley worried Carver enough that he turned and saw Anders laying crumpled on the ground, the faint, blue cracks that showed Justice’s presence slowly closing.

“The mage is down!” he shouted, sprinting towards him. From somewhere ahead of him, Marian grunted an acknowledgement over the wet, thick sound of her staff meeting someone’s skull. He turned to ask—

“He keeps elfroot in his belt!” she panted, leaning heavily on her staff. When her opponent moaned lowly, she bared her teeth and smacked the flat of her blade against him again. With a  _hrk!_ he went limp and unconscious.

Carver’s hands were already digging through the pouches on the healing belt, fingers trembling as he cradled potion vials, searching, searching,  _searching._  He broke one in his haste— half expecting Anders to sit up and snark at him that those were  _expensive,_ Carver, you insufferable  _ass_ — but finally pulled one out labeled with a spidery E. Snarling, he leaned over the mage and forced his mouth open— trying desperately not to think about the fact that he  _wasn’t breathing,_ oh  _fuck_ , or the fact that he was prying his lips apart and the images that rose in his mind might have been fun if this wasn’t a  _life or death_ moment— to pour the potion in.

Marian came around and laid her hand on the back of Carver’s neck— the only place she could reach around his Templar plate— with a sympathetic noise in her throat, while Fenris paced, waiting for another ambush. Her grip tightened as she sniffled, the two of them staring at him as if they could bring him back with sheer wi—

Anders sat up, sputtering and coughing and spraying elfroot into Carver’s face. “Not fun!” he gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, looking down in confusion. “The hell—?”

Marian retreated; he heard the sound of her footsteps as she padded down the alley to meet her elf. Carver didn’t care. He didn’t care that Anders dripped with cold sweat and shivered from mana exhaustion. He didn’t care that Fenris was murmuring about “the abomination” living after all. He didn’t care that the breeze from Gallows Bay smelled like rotting fish, poverty, and desperation. His focus had narrowed down to the rise and fall of Anders’ thin chest, his breath against his ear as Carver pulled him into shaking arms, and the hammering heartbeat he could feel beneath his gloves.

“Don’t do that again,” Carver whispered hoarsely. Too many emotions were running through him, heart galloping in circles around his chest. He felt— Anders— fuck, he couldn't  _breathe._ “Please.”

Anders didn’t speak, but slid a shaking hand into the hair at the nape of Carver’s neck. His muttered apology cut off as Carver moved enough to kiss him, breath catching as he cupped the back of his head. This wasn’t like that first kiss, over a year ago. That one had been rushed, unplanned, almost furious in its intensity. And still, it had hovered at the edge of Carver’s memory ever since.

This kiss was hard and desperate, this was  _you can’t die on me_  and  _I didn’t mean to_  and  _why do I need you_  all tumbling over one another, bright and sharp and frantic. Carver’s head began to swim as Anders’ mouth opened under his, warm and  _wet_  and  _welcoming_  and oh, sweet Maker, he was going to drown in the noises the other man was making.

Carver had never believed those silly romance novels Marian and Bethany had snuck into the house, about— about kisses where spirits sang and time stopped and all that nonsense.  _Romantic mabari shit,_  he used to sneer. And he was right.

Sort of.

Time didn’t stop as he licked into Anders’ mouth— it  _crystalized_. It went clear, bright, and golden, like sinking his teeth into a ray of sunlight. Kissing the Rose’s girls hadn’t felt like this, like all the answers of Kirkwall and the Chantry and— and the  _bloody world_  were at his fingertips. Kissing Isabela had been fun, had felt nice, but it hadn’t felt  _right,_ it hadn't been this man shuddering and gasping in his arms. This man, impossible and— and  _stubborn_  and—

And he didn’t hear spirits singing, or Marian’s relieved sigh; he didn’t hear anything but the pounding beat of his heart, thundering  _mine, mine, mine_  as Anders arched against him, greedy and purring. Thin fingers clenched and curled in his hair, tug— tugging,  _fuck_ , Carver didn’t know that was a  _thing_  but apparently it  _was_.

They were both breathless by the time Anders pulled back, limp and panting, his eyes just a thin ring of whiskey-brown around pupils. It took Anders snapping his fingers in front of Carver’s nose before he could jerk his eyes away from Anders’ lips, kiss-swollen and reddened and  _distracting._ It took several more minutes before he could focus on the fact that Anders was trying to talk to him.

“What?” he asked, hating how slow and stupid he sounded, but his mind was still wrapped in the warm, hazy feeling the kiss had buried him under.

“I asked,” Anders rolled his eyes, mockery and affection in equal amounts. Carver’s eyes went half-mast at the gentle brush of his fingertips along his jaw, “if this means something?”

“Maybe it does,” Carver replied, too dazed for anything but raw honesty. He ignored Fenris’ scoff— it sounded put-on anyway; he’d  _heard_  the elf when derision took hold of his common sense— and Marian’s quiet noises of glee. His entire world rested in the way Anders swallowed nervously, his eyes darting away, and the pleased, red flush of his cheeks.

***

_So this is what it’s like to lose everything._

Carver sat, elbows braced on his knees, while the world went mad outside. Anders’ clinic hadn’t changed much in appearance— a few drawers had been emptied across the floor, and the doors hung half off the hinges, victims of looting while mages ran for their lives— but somehow, at the dawn of a new morning with no Chantry, no Circle, and a fractured Order, it seemed… small. Sad, and dirty, like one of Darktown’s bedraggled orphans curled up in a corner, too beaten down to even take handouts.

He’d hoped… well. He’d hoped. 

It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand what Anders had done, or why. In his years as a Templar, Carver had seen things that turned his stomach, things that would have sent Justice surging out of Anders’ skin, ready to cleave the world in two with righteous fury. Well over six feet, Carver had been able to stand between the worst offenders and the most vulnerable; he could close his eyes and see the few mages he’d helped smuggle out of the Circle— trusting Marian and Anders and,  _fuck_ , even Fenris to get them somewhere  _safe_. Somewhere out of Kirkwall _._ The empty, broken look in some of the younger Circle mages’ eyes had brought fury and anguish, and too often when he shadowed younger recruits, he found his sword in his hand.

Meredith might have overlooked a few brawls between recruits as  _enthusiasm_ , but Carver had come too close too many times to ending some of the threats stalking his halls.

If Cullen wasn’t going to snap himself awake and out of whatever nightmare made him scream at night, someone had to protect them.

_I wonder if Marian did it herself or if she had the elf do it. Maybe even the Choir Boy._

_I wonder if she’d tell me._

There was no way his sister— full of righteousness and sarcasm and forged sharp and hard by these years in Kirkwall— would have let a mage terrorist go free. Not even if that mage were…

Not even if Carver…

“I thought I’d find you here,” a ghost’s voice whispered from the broken door. Carver didn’t bother to look up— he’d been so sure he’d heard Anders’ voice dogging his heels all through that desperate sprint through Lowtown, what was another one here?

Carver jumped when two cold hands wrapped around his, when a long, concerned face— familiar, ragged,  _beloved_ — swam into his field of vision.

“You’re dead.” Carver’s voice was hoarse, rough with smoke and exhaustion and  _grief_. “Marian wouldn’t— the  _Chantry_ —”

“Carver, I’m  _here,_ ” Anders murmured, sinking to his knees in front of the chair. “She let me go. She cried and screamed and threatened— I fully expected that dagger in the back but…” He swallowed thickly, disbelief written across his face, trembling as Carver slowly brought his hands up to cup his face. “Fenris and Sebastian wanted her to but, in the end, she made me swear to try and put it to rights.”

He said nothing, eyes roving over every familiar scar and plane of the man’s face, afraid to even blink because then this shade might disappear. And if this was a demon, if  _this_  was what mages faced every night in the Fade— this hope _,_  this dangling, aching  _desire,_  then maybe… maybe he could understand why some gave in.

“Carver,  _please._ ” Anders linked his own hands around Carver’s, eyes pleading. “Say something _._ ”

“I love you.”

Silence.

“Come again?” Anders stuttered, blinking rapidly. He opened his mouth to say something else— probably something designed to drive Carver mad, the way most of the things he said were, because no one got under Carver’s skin the way Anders did— and sighed when Carver leaned forward and rested his forehead against Anders’. Carver felt his lover’s jaw trembling, felt the tightening of the muscles in his neck as he swallowed against the tears that he didn’t deserve to shed.

Like he had so many times in the past years— nights when he could slip away from the Gallows, nights he berated himself for after, because evil didn’t stalk his halls only when he was on duty— Carver tilted Anders’ head and brushed their lips together. The trembling intensified, until Carver couldn’t have said who was shaking against whom. 

Anders slumped against him, the kiss going soft and sweet and  _quiet_  in that way that made his heart skip a beat.

“I said, I love you,” Carver murmured against his lover’s mouth, afraid to pull away, afraid to press forward. “I didn’t— when the Chantry— I’ve never said that before,” he admitted, closing his eyes in shame. “Six years and I’ve never once—”

“Carver,  _stop._ ” Anders pushed against his knees, sliding between them and wrapping his arms around Carver’s neck. He’d taken the Templar armor off at the Gallows, too ashamed to wear the sword of the Order after the shitshow his city had become, so he felt the full warmth of Anders’ breath, the cool of his fingertips as they sank into his hair, the press of his body.

His breathing hitched as Anders kissed him, short and frantic, again and again until he opened his eyes.

“You’ve ruined all of Thedas, you know,” Carver murmured, running his thumb across Anders’ lower lip. “Isabela was onto something when she said that a conflict between the Circle and the Order would pull everyone in.”

Anders bowed his head with a sigh. “I know.”

Both of them were silent for a moment, the weight of what Anders had done pressing between them, hanging heavy and  _dangerous_. Carver thought of the brothers in arms he’d been forced to strike down— some of them were innocent men, sworn to a religious order that was power-mad and too far-reaching. Some had given him pause, when he’d found their bodies (burned, frozen, charred), grief mingling with victory and fear that somewhere, he’d stumble over his sister’s corpse, or one of her—  _their_ — friends’.

“So what’re we going to do about it?” Carver finally asked, afraid to let go. The world was ending, the mages scattered, a war raging across the Marches— but here, for now, he still had his family. Varric would roll his eyes and mutter something about humans in skirts, Fenris would shake and shiver and snarl beside Marian, the very definition of unsubtle as his lyrium flared. ‘Bela and Merrill would flirt outrageously, but they'd have his back.

And Anders…

Well.

He wasn't letting go of Anders for anything, and if the Maker hated all mages the way the Order claimed, the Maker could go  _hang_.


	3. August Challenge: Day 3 - Family (human!Cole)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can feel the sunlight, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter Title:** Sunlight

Day 3 - Family

Fandom: Dragon Age

POV: Cole 

***

***

He can feel the sunlight, now.

Before, it was just a concept, a passing of an idea, a glimmer spun between frames of time given meaning by tongues and words. It meant nothing to him-- held no fear, no pain, had no need of healing. It didn’t sing to him or cry out or need him; he would pass through it quietly, invisible, focused only on the next light in the darkness, the next broken heart to heal. But now, he can feel it on his face, warm and real and good on his skin.

It makes him smile.

Skyhold is… pretty. That’s the right word– it smells like warm rain and tastes like the fresh bread The Iron Bull sometimes sneaks from the kitchen. Like the bright yellow flowers Krem gives the singer to make her blush and smile.

“Hey, kid.” Varric squats down next to him, forearms on his knees. “You doing okay?”

_–i hope the kid is okay. we’ll help him be okay. learning that you weren’t real and now you are– pride, proud, blond hair through blunt fingers– like an anchor, sturdy and strong and grounded, solid, rock, stone stone stone what does the stone really mean– never had kids, but the kid’s good–_

“I’m better,” Cole answered, puzzled. “But I put a bee in Leliana’s wine. She didn’t like it as much as the honey.”

Varric snorted, the laugh sounding caught somewhere in his throat. Cole can feel the warmth under the words. “We’ll work on that, kid.”

***

The solar is empty, now. Even when there are people moving through it, and people up top in the library, it feels lonely. The Veil is thinner here than the rest of Skyhold, like a clear spot on a frosty window. He finds her here sometimes, standing at the desk, looking for answers in the things he left behind. Her hurt echoes in her chest, a spark growing and burning into anger. Sometimes he hears her thinking about the kiss that wasn’t real, before blond hair and scarred hands got into her heart and grabbed hold.

The Fade still swirls around her, eddying across her scarred arm, but the anchor isn’t so bright anymore, doesn’t drown the quieter, deeper parts of her out. It doesn’t sing.

He wonders if she misses the song.

_–woods so bright and green they’re searing, almost painful. songs and stories around a campfire, thin hands wrapped around hers, big but still so small, so young. smiling, happy, while dorian teases and the bull tells truths wrapped in lies. no one is going to touch him while i’m here, spirit, ghost, cole. cole. mine to save, mine to protect–_

“Cole!” Isera turns, a smile replacing the frown on her face. Inside, her heart brightens when her hand links with his; he can feel the waves inside her, swelling and cresting and love whispering his name.

“I have a question.”

Her head tilts as she looks at him, ears tipping forward. “Okay.” Her smile is easy, but something painful whispers behind it. Corypheus is gone, but he left so many scars in the sky, in his victims, in the world. “What’s on your mind, dove?”

_–white like a dove, that hair. would mamala accept him? spirits are feared but he’s not really a spirit anymore, is he–_

“Varric…” Cole tries to find the words, but they taste funny on his tongue. How can he find the right shape when he knows– now he knows– he doesn’t see things the same way.

“Do I need to yell at him?” She smiles– softer this time, more real– running her fingers through the fringe of his hair, gentle and warm and right. The other Cole forgot what it felt like to have  _care._

“No.” A frustrated noise escapes him. The words aren’t right-- he can feel it. He’s tried to stop them when they aren’t right, it makes people uncomfortable, but this question has been pulling at him for weeks. Isera steps closer, eyes shining and concerned. “Varric calls me _kid_.”

It would be easier if she could see the way he could. “He calls me kid and his thoughts whisper _son_. It pulls me here. You worry and sing me songs in a tongue that makes you ache and think words like family and son and _mine_.” Her eyes widen and unease paints her cheeks red under the not-blood. “Am I?”

“Are you– oh!” He hears the click in her mind and sighs in relief. He found the right shape, the pressure is easing in his chest– funny that he couldn’t feel that before. Before he can answer, her arms are around him, pulling him close. She smells like wood and herbs and wind; Cole closes his eyes and trembles. He’s almost as tall as her, now, and that makes her both sad and happy.

“Of course you’re family, Cole,” she whispers into his hair, holding him tightly. “Varric loves you. I love you, too.”

“I know,” he mumbles against her shoulder. Being human hurts, but they make it worth it. “It feels like sunlight.”


	4. August Challenge: Day 4 - Something You Don't Ship (Solavellan)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he looked at her, something inside shifted, seemed to stretch out, long and content, and _settle._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I'm _behind_. I'm a terrible person, I should be flogged daily, etc, etc, I get it. I got sick and let my feverish brain talk me out of writing every day and well, here we are. I'm scrambling to catch up.
> 
>  **Chapter Title:** Change on the Wind

31 Days of Fic Challenge

Day 4: Something You Don’t Ship

Desc.: Solavellan

***

* * *

 

***

The cold wind of Haven had never felt better. The dungeon where she’d woken up, where her journey as the Inquisitor had begun, was stifling. Cold and damp and still altogether too hot, somehow; it made her throat close up, made her want to drag her nails across her own skin just to prove she could still feel.

That she hadn’t died down there, in the dark.

Funny, though. She had a feeling that she wasn’t… supposed to be here. It wasn’t a very strong feeling, nothing she could put her finger on, but there was a whisper of unease that shivered down her spine. The ground she walked across didn’t crunch like snow should—instead, it had a slight, springy texture. That nagging feeling that she should know more, should  _understand_ , wouldn’t go away.

“It seems you hold the key to our salvation.”

Isera looked up, her eyes fixed on Solas. They’d spent what felt like hours together, wandering through Haven, talking quietly. There was something  _intense_  about her fellow apostate, something about the way he looked at her. She’d only seen that look on his face a few times—in the Hinterlands, when he activated the Veil artifact; when she’d shyly brought him a piece of crumbling stone from the Exalted Plains, so that he could touch it with his Fade abilities.

When he looked at her, something inside shifted, seemed to stretch out, long and content, and  _settle_.

“You had sealed it with a gesture,” Solas murmured, those gray eyes never wavering. “And right then, I felt the whole world change.”

_Felt._

The word reverberated in Isera’s skull, building off of each echo until something she hadn’t even dared to dream slowly raised its head.

“Felt the whole world change?” she asked quietly, eyes darting to the ground. She wanted—well, she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted. 

“A figure of speech.”

Isera met his gaze easily, belying the heart hammering in her chest. “I’m aware of the metaphor, Solas,” she murmured, taking a step closer. The slight widening of his eyes as she took another step, until she could feel his breath puffing across her skin, bolstered her nerve enough to reach out and graze the edge of his robe with her fingers. “I’m more interested in  _felt._ ”

Solas’ fingers twitched as they closed over hers, his eyes wavering as he studied her. The warmth from his hand blocked out some of the chill of the Frostback winds, but made her shiver from something else entirely.

“You change…  _everything,_ ” he whispered, low and intense. There was something under his words, some raw, keening truth that rattled in Isera’s bones even as the the first brush of his lips– chapped, bitten, wind-burned– took her knees out from under her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a solasmancer, so if it sucks, I'm terribly sorry. I watched that fade kiss probably twenty times trying to figure out how to portray it.


	5. August Challenge: Day 5 - Friends (Lavellan & Merrill)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will it hold?” Ethelan hissed, tugging at her hand impatiently.
> 
> “It will if you don’t go running off like a scared nug!” she shot back.

31 Days of Fic  
Day 5 - Friends  
Featuring: Isera Lavellan, Ethelan Lavellan, Eolas Lavellan, Merrill Sabrae, Cullen Rutherford  
  
*** 

***

“Da’len!”  
  
Isera clutched her brother’s hand tightly, trying to stifle the laugh she was barely holding on to. The  _hahren_  who’d volunteered to help watch the children of the various clans probably regretted her decision-- she was newly come to the leadership, barely into her fortieth year, and looking every minute of it as she stood in the mouth of the clearing, pulling at her braids in frustration. Isera could feel faint tendrils of magic stretching out, crawling through the branches like seeking fingers. It was nothing to throw out her other hand and cocoon herself and Ethelan in magic that whispered  _nothing to see here_.  
  
That was the newest trick she’d found.  _Mamala_  said she was going to be a powerful mage one day, like her  _baba_ was, so that she had a few thimblefuls of magic already wasn’t a big surprise. What did surprise, and exasperate, her family was that she often dragged her brother into trouble with it. Her father-- all gentle hands and amused eyes-- had taken her aside and told her that magic was a song in her blood. And she had to listen to it, because it sang to everyone a little differently; by combining different songs and notes and tastes and colors, she could work wonders.  
  
Which is how she’d shaped spells that baffled her family-- and her elders.  
  
“Will it hold?” Ethelan hissed, tugging at her hand impatiently.  
  
“It will if you don’t go running off like a scared nug!” she shot back, yanking him further into the brush as the  _hahren_  passed too close to their hiding place. In her mind, she doubled the layers of their cocoon, carefully pressing layers of green and brown and adding a touch more power to the whisper.  
  
_Nothing to see here._  
  
Nothing here.  
  
Finally, the  _hahren_  sighed, swearing under her breath as she recalled her searching spell and stalked off back to the Arlathvhen. Isera waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded before releasing the cocoon-- her chest had begun to ache as her tiny pool of mana emptied.  
  
Ethelan burst from the branches, his grin wide and excited. “I can’t believe that worked!” he crowed, slinging his child-size bow over his shoulder. “Although  _mamala_  is going to yell at us.”  
  
“Yell at me, you mean,” Isera muttered, brushing the front of her leggings off. To her despair, there were already dirtied holes on the knees where they’d dived through the bramble;  _baba_  and  _mamala_  were going to scold her for sure.  
  
“You wouldn’t keep doing it if you didn’t want to,” her brother pointed out, not untruthfully. “Come on. I want to see these ruins everyone’s talking about!”  
  
***  
  
“Shh!” Isera grabbed the neck of her brother’s tunic and hauled him backwards. The glare he shot her as he landed on his rump softened as they heard a small, high voice singing.  
  
_“Lath, sulevin. Lath araval ena_.” The song  _Suledin_  was often sung in a serious fashion, as the subject deserved; the fall of Arlathan had laid their people low, but still they struggled and endured. This voice, though, sounded as though it were incapable of being sad-- the lyrics, though sung with as much reverence as the song demanded, and with a rather endearing childish lisp, seemed to twine with the sunlight shining through the Brecilian trees to create something.  
  
Well.  
  
Magical.  
  
“It’s a girl!” Eth whispered, watching their quarry as she skipped through the trees, black braids bouncing against her shoulders.  
  
“Really?” Isera asked, a hefty dose of their mother’s sarcasm ringing in her voice. At only six years old, Isera had already developed a firm sense of what was right, wrong, and annoying. Her brothers often fit into all three categories at once. “And here I thought it might have been a sylvan.”  
  
Eth sat back on his heels, studying his sister. Barely a year apart, they shared so many traits that finding a difference could be startling. “You sound like  _mamae_ ,” he finally said, wrinkling his nose.  
  
A small, dark head popped through the flowering brush and smiled. “Is that a bad thing?”  
  
“Ah!”  
  
Isera blinked up at the sky, her heart beating wildly in her chest. Sprawled across her legs, Ethelan lay, breathing hard. The girl clutched her basket and tilted her head, confused.  
  
“Did I startle you?” she asked brightly. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. I’m Merrill.”  
  
“Isera.” She raised her hand briefly, not making any motion to get up. “And this  _dahn’direlan_  laying across my feet like a druffalo is Ethelan.” Eth grunted, sitting up and then pulling Isera up as she sputtered.  
  
“I’m Merrill!” the girl repeated, beaming. “Oh. I already said that, didn’t I?”  
  
***  
  
“So wait,” Merrill said, giggling as she grabbed for the butterfly Isera had created. “You’re Lavellan? Your Keeper is related to Marethari!”  
  
Isera nodded, releasing another illusion for Merrill to play with; it fluttered against her nose, fanning its wings over her cheeks. “Yes. My father is Deshanna’s son.” She tilted her head, kicking Eth’s foot to wake him from his doze. “How did you know?”  
  
Merrill’s smile dimmed a little and she lay back on the carpet of leaves the forest provided them. “I’m the third mage born to Alerion,” she said softly. “I’m to depart with Marethari at the end of the Arlathvhen.”  
  
“Not all clans follow that rule,” Ethelan contributed unexpectedly, rolling to face them. “Ours doesn’t. Issy is the fourth or fifth mage.”  
  
Merrill’s voice was quiet as she said, “Oh.” She adjusted the daisy chain she’d woven for the three of them-- with magic, of course, making Ethelan snort something about lazy mages-- before she spoke again. “Well. We’re quite scattered, aren’t we?”  
  
Isera rolled closer and threw her arm over Merrill’s shoulders. “Marethari and  _mamala_  are close. And we’ll be in the Free Marches more often than not.” She nudged the other girl’s cheek with her chin, grinning as it won her a smile. “We can stay friends!”  
  
“Is that so?” An amused male voice said from above them. Eth groaned and buried his face in his hands. That alone told Isera who’d found them.  
  
She rolled to her back and smiled winningly. “Hi,  _baba_.”  
  
Eolas crouched, his knees popping loudly in the silence of the Brecilian, and tangled his fingers through Isera’s auburn curls. “You know the  _hahren_  are losing their minds over the ‘missing’ children, right?” he asked mildly, absently braiding pieces of her hair. “Your grandmother, in particular, is furious.”  
  
“Would it help if I said we were scouting?” Isera asked, trying for a bright smile-- they were her father’s weakness. “Eth needs to practice and we all know he can’t hit a hart if it had a glowing target painted on it.”  
  
“No, it wouldn't,” her father said, with a fond grin and a ruffle of his son's hair. “He needs more practice than that anyway.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Come along,” Eolas said, rubbing his knuckles across his mouth, trying to erase the smile. “And bring your friend, as well. Might as well introduce her to the family.”  
  
***  
  
“Never any peace and quiet,” Isera growled, running a hand-- her only hand, now-- through her sweat-damp curls. “Yeah, yeah!” She barked at the door, stomping the last few steps to the main room of their new home. “I heard you the first time!”  
  
“Is?” Cullen poked his head around the corner, all concerned eyes and sunburnt skin. “Do you need some help?”  
  
Isera struggled not to scream at her husband. She loved Cullen-- truly, she did. But ever since they'd taken Varric up on his offer of a house in Kirkwall-- no. Ever since she'd returned from the Crossroads minus half a limb, he'd been hovering over her more often than not. Which was why a month after moving to their new manor, less than half of their meager belongings had been unpacked and put away.  
  
Instead of replying, she stomped the rest of the way towards the door, deactivating the wards and jerking the door open in one motion to face whatever well-wisher had the misfortune of being on her steps.  
  
“Yes, I am the former Inquisitor, yes, I live here, yes, my husband is a former Templar. No, we are not--” Isera cut off her tirade when she saw the daisy chain held in trembling hands. The last time she'd see one of those--  
  
“You're much more grumpy these days,” Merrill said, a tentative smile hovering around her lips as she held the flowers out. “I bet you'd even get along with Fenris, and he hates everyone but Hawke.”  
  
Isera stared as the ghost on her doorstep kept talking. “Oh! You could have brooding contests. Fenris would win, of course, even Varric says, but you'd be very close!”  
  
Varric had talked about the young Dalish First who'd joined Hawke’s band of misfits, had even known that he'd called her Daisy. But he hadn't told her it was--  
  
“Merrill?” Isera whispered, stunned. Too many emotions were circling in her heart for her to catch just one; the feeling reminded her of watching the ravens take flight from Skyhold’s rookery. A sea of wings and words, too fast for the eye to follow for long.  
  
Merrill’s eyes traveled down her former friend, taking in the silver hair, the rough leathers.  
  
And of course, the missing arm.  
  
_Damn you, Solas_ , she thought bitterly, not for the first time. Isera took the same moment to look the other elf over, as well, noting the vallaslin that hadn't marked her as an adult the last they'd seen each other. Her hair was shorter now, and there were small scars all over her arms.  
  
Then Merrill’s face split into that wide, brilliant grin that had made those two Arlathvhens something to look forward to, and nodded to her missing arm.  
  
“Need a hand,  _ma’falon_?”  
  
There was a hint of wickedness in that grin, the echo of a smirk so like Varric’s and Hawke’s-- who had only looked at her with something too close to pity to be comfortable-- that reminded Isera of the long years it had been since she'd last set eyes on her fellow mage. She heard Cullen hiss from the small office he'd claimed as his own, waiting for the inevitable explosion of temper that lurked just under her surface these days.  
  
But all Isera could do was laugh.  
  
It wasn't a dignified thing-- nothing like the small, controlled laughs she'd presented in Orlais, or the loud, half-drunken laughs she'd shared with Bull over their first dragon kill. It wasn't even like the breathless laugh that she'd pressed against Cullen’s mouth in Halamshiram the day they wed.  
  
This was pain and raw, pure agony. This was almost a year of pitying gazes and waking up off-balance while Dagna promised ‘just a little longer.’ This was a month of people bowing in the streets, murmuring, “Comtesse.” This laugh held so much bitterness, and every regret between that last Arlathvhen and now--  
  
And Merrill stood there, holding a daisy chain, with that same bright, loving smile, as if it hadn't been twelve years since they'd last set eyes on each other. As if the doorframe wasn't smoking around Isera’s hand, as if the residents of Kirkwall-- used to eccentric nobles-- weren't staring like their former hero had lost what was left of her mind. As if her husband wasn't hovering behind her, waiting to see what had finally lanced the festering wound on her heart.  
  
The wave of Isera’s laugh washed over her, over them both, and still, Merrill stood there, smiling and waiting. Her eyes had gone suspiciously large and watery, but she didn't scold Isera for her outburst. She didn't mention the decade plus it had been, or the fact that both of them now wore jewelry that carried faint traces of bonding magic. Every time Isera looked, all she saw was  _friend_.

It was what she'd needed, for a long time. Not to be crippled, not to be a victim, or a survivor. To just be Isera.   
  
“You could,” Isera tried, wheezing around another giggle, this one lighter and freer. “You could say that, yeah.”  
  
Merrill’s smile went sly and satisfied as she plopped the flowers on Isera’s head and took her hand with a reassuring squeeze. “Well, good thing you've got friends then, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter Title:** Chains of Daisies


	6. August Challenge: Day 6 - A Fandom You Love But Never Write For (Pacific Rim)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You can always find me in the Drift._

Day 6 - A Fandom You Love but Never Write For

Fandom: Pacific Rim

Characters: Mako Mori, Raleigh Beckett

***

* * *

***

There were days where she didn’t want to wake up. Not that she didn’t cherish her life, not the way Raleigh sometimes didn’t want to wake up to face another day. But in the heavy, peaceful haze of near-sleep-- where her muscles weren’t _quite_ protesting at lying in bed yet, and her eyes wouldn’t open, and the strong-bitter-home smell of Raleigh’s coffee floated through the flat-- she could feel Stacker.

_You can always find me in the Drift._

There weren’t many jaeger pilots left, and putting the Drift into words was an exercise in futility. It was vast and powerful and all together _right_ . And how could you explain that to someone who’d never felt it? She could sink back into her mind, past the layers of sleep to the deeper, warmer current of memory that tangled with the Drift-- it was like falling into a pool of water that you’ve known forever, knowing that it would always catch you. It was tasting her mother’s _okonomiyaki_ and listening to the music her father made in his forge.

It was seeing the sunlight glowing across Stacker’s face after Onibaba lay dead in the streets of Tokyo.

It was looking in Raleigh’s eyes when he took that first strained, painful breath after the Breach, when she’d thought she’d lost him.

_You can always find me in the Drift._

A warm hand brushed across her forehead-- she could distantly feel it, drawing her back from the comfort of the Drift. She groaned and buried her face into her pillow, chasing that current again. It was the only time she could see her parents. The only time she could see Stacker. The rest of the world could wait.

She could feel Raleigh’s smile-- fond, exasperated, _familiar_ \-- as he rose from her bed.

***

“ _Ohayo_ ,” Mako murmured, dropping her forehead on Raleigh’s shoulder. He chuckled as one hand came up and tangled in her hair, the other cupping his coffee. Mako wrinkled her nose, glad that at least their bond left that particular appetite all his. Their flat was a grounding space, a place where their haphazardly-meshed minds and personalities could meld without overpowering either of them. Raleigh had never learned to like her pickled ginger, even if he tolerated it, just as she couldn’t understand his love for coffee.

There was no need for words as she curled up in the chair next to him, picking at his breakfast. He absently forwarded her the sections of the digital paper she liked best and nudged a cup of cocoa towards her. Their silent mornings were a dream of peace, where Raleigh didn’t have to tell her he’d dreamed of Yancy, and she didn’t tell him about walking through the ghosts of Tokyo; it was all understood, shared, known. No expectations, no lies or half-truths or hidden things, nothing but a swell of trust and love so deep, it occasionally took their breath away. Their bond hummed between them, deep and wide, that settled into all the raw, broken places in their souls and soothed.

“Heard the program’s starting up again,” Raleigh said later, his fingers playing with her hair as they watched an old cartoon Raleigh hadn’t even remembered he’d wanted to see. “Something about Pentecost having a son.”

“Jake,” Mako yawned agreeably, handing him the bowl of hard candy before he asked. “Not sure how that will turn out.”

“Do you want to go back?” Raleigh asked, already knowing the answer.

“I think so,” she said slowly. Becoming a pilot had been her driving force for so long, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do beyond having her hands buried in the guts of an engine and machine oil smeared across her arms. “But we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

For an answer, Raleigh brushed a faint kiss across the crown of her head as they settled back to watch the new episode. Despite the changing world, the vids that portrayed the jaeger program as everything from heroes to fools, they had each other. Always.

_You can always find me in the Drift._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i just love platonic soulmates okay. and these two are so ridiculously perfect in all the ways they aren't perfect.
> 
>  **Chapter Title:** A Note on Drifting Away


	7. August Challenge: Day 7 - The Bad Thing No One Talks About (Shakarian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’d died hearing Liara’s screaming pleas and Tali’s sobbing.
> 
> But she’d still died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Contains talk of death, self-harm, and mild body horror related to eyes and burns.
> 
>  **Chapter Title:** On Becoming a Ghost

Day 7 - The Bad Thing That No One Ever Talks About

Fandom: Mass Effect

Warnings: Contains talk of death, self-harm, and mild body horror related to eyes and burns.

Misc.: Pre-Shakarian

***

***

She could see why Joker had been so reluctant to enter this system again. Why after two hours of shouting and a tearful breakdown that wasn’t hers— for once— she’d ended up storming down the hangar bay and taking a shuttle. She was Commander  _fucking_  Shepard, and there was an aching, yawning hole in her heart labeled _SSV Normandy_ — she had to see her final resting place. Standing here now, she wished she’d listened to Joker when he’d asked her not to come.

Alchera was crawling with ghosts. 

The landing of her shuttle had been smooth and easy, the inertial dampeners in perfect order. That annoyed her. Some part of her, some twisted need to  _suffer_ , had wanted the turbulence and Gs and inescapable pressure of descending to this graveyard. An echo of what would have happened to her lifeless body as it plummeted through the thin atmosphere, burning up.

Perhaps it would have given her some sort of closure. That’s what she’d told Joker, anyway. “I need to say good-bye.”

The truth was, she needed to find the place she’d died. She had— however Miranda tried to soften it, however Jacob hesitated and danced around the subject, Commander Iolana Shepard had died, suffocating above this frozen hellscape. She’d died with honor, with pride that she’d saved as much of her crew as she could. She’d died thinking about her mother’s reaction when the KIA report landed on her desk, about how Garrus would run himself down without someone to keep him from burning out.

She’d died hearing Liara’s screaming pleas and Tali’s sobbing.

But she’d still died.

What stood here, looking at the wreckage of Shepard’s home, was as much of a ghost as anything lingering over the bones of the  _Normandy._  She wore Shepard’s face, had Shepard’s memories. Those dark, fairy-point freckles scattered across her cheeks, that auburn hair, that all belonged to Shepard, too. It was a reasonable facsimile, one that no one had seen through yet. And still, it was a facade.

Iolana Shepard had died in the darkness between the stars, and this pale, trembling imitation stood in her place.

“Get a move on, Shepard,” she muttered to herself; the name sounded foreign on her tongue, something that didn’t taste right, didn’t fit in her mouth.  _A lie._

Snow crunched under her boots. She couldn’t hear it over the silence of the dead world, but she could feel the scrape and creak as her feet broke the thin crust of ice keeping the landscape pristine. She’d always hated that sound, could imagine it all too well; a beach kid during the summers she’d spent on Earth with her father, winter had never been something she’d gotten used to. With every step and silent crunch, another shudder worked its way up her spine.

Something caught the light from her helmet’s lamp and she squatted down, some part of her still amazed that her “rebirth”— even in her head, she could hear the sarcastic finger-quotes— had even taken care of the old scar on her hamstring that would have made such a move painful and stiff.

 _Frame up restoration,_  a cold, cruel voice whispered in her mind. She wasn’t sure if it was a memory from when she’d returned to cognizance, or just the howling, screaming demons waiting for her the first time she’d tried to sleep after Lazarus Station.  _Every scar you earned, gone._

Shepard shook her head, taking a deep breath of her tank’s air, and firmly pushed the voice away. It would haunt her later, as the quiet of the new  _Normandy SR-2_ — another new imposter, wrapped up pretty and powerful but just a hollow shell; Shepard knew the feeling— pressed in around her.

But, for now it desisted, and that was the important thing. That was her compromise with it, the only way she could remain even minimally functional. It was the only path left to her, after the horror on Chakwas’ face the first time she’d seen the jagged, red slashes on her wrists. She'd just been trying to find the end button.

***

Shepard stepped off the shuttle, trying to shake the static out of her hair. EDI— another new surprise, thanks Cerberus— popped into view over the hangar terminal.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Commander?”

Shepard would swear on a stack of Bibles to a God she didn’t believe in anymore that the AI had more insight into her mind than she did sometimes. That question was anything but innocent.

 _Of course,_  the anxiety whispered,  _if you are just a Cerberus drone, that would make sense._

“I’m not sure yet, EDI,” Shepard said, casual tone belying the emotions building in her heart. She clutched the burnt helmet—

_—stars rolling past, stomach in her throat, choking, choking, no air, no fucking AIR—_

—to her chest, the dogtags of twenty people who would never return from Alchera clinking gently inside. Twenty-one people had died on that ball of ice, resided as ghosts and frozen bodies and the final regrets of their families. What made her more valuable than her crew? Why was she the only ghost who’d gotten to come back?

Shepard hit her knees, hard, almost relishing in the sharp-hot-shock of pain that went singing up her nerves as her chest collapsed. Her fingers trembled on the once-smooth helmet—

— _burning, my ship’s burning, oh god, god help me, please. Help them. Can’t breathe, too hot, eyes bulging. Feels like they’re gonna pop out and hang on my fucking cheeks—_

“Shepard?”

She gasped, throat the size of a cybernetic muscle strand. The air made a high, funny wheezing noise as it screamed into her lungs—

— _i’m going to die here. there's NO. FUCKING. AIR.—_

“Shepard!”

Somewhere far away, she could hear the click of talons on her hardsuit, could feel someone trying to pry the helmet from her grasp. She bared her teeth, too blinded by her dying to see or care or let go— if she had to die again, then Pressly, Tucks, and Gladstone weren’t going to be forgotten again. She wouldn’t  _leave_  them again. The dead needed to be remembered—

***

“Who even made the decision to come here!” The roar of a furious turian was the first thing Shepard became aware of. Her eyelids were too heavy to lift, but there was real distress under the anger, and she struggled to surface from the sleep that tasted like medicine.

“Shepard did,” Miranda’s voice answered coldly. “The Admiral sent her a message about the crash site—”

“And you thought it was a good idea?”  _Ah,_  Shepard thought, unexpectedly amused.  _Garrus._  “You let her see what those bastards did to the  _Normandy_? That was her  _home._ ”

“No!” Miranda finally snapped at him, and Shepard was almost surprised to hear a tinge of worry.  _Huh. The ice queen feels._  “I thought it was a terrible idea! Joker and I both tried to talk her out of it!”

“Get out,” Garrus snarled, sounding much closer than before. “She doesn’t need you here.”

“Oh, but she needs  _you_?” There was a sneer in Miranda’s voice, something that told Shepard she’d have to deal with the two of them eventually. “I brought her back,  _Officer_  Vakarian. I have every right to be here. More than a half-dead turian  _vigilante._ ”

“Stop,” Shepard croaked. Or tried to. Her throat burned, raw and aching with every breath. The heavy, metallic taste of grief and Zolpidem flooded her mouth as she woke further.

“You brought her back,” Garrus growled. Shepard felt his talons land on her head, gentle despite the pain in his flanged voice. “You brought her back, but Joker and I are the only ones who’ve been with her from the start.”

Miranda scoffed. “And how long have you waited to throw  _that_  in my face?”

“You don’t  _know her_ ,” Garrus all but screeched. “ _I_  know her.  _Joker_  knows her. We love her!”

“Stop,” Shepard tried again, managing a wheeze. Both of them shut up and when she opened her eyes, she saw Garrus’ concerned blue eyes above hers. With a great deal of effort and a few short, pained hisses, Shepard managed to bring her hand up enough to wrap around his. “ _Stop_.”

***

The two of them sat together, staring at the charred wreckage sitting on her desk. The shape of the helmet was still mostly intact, but the atmospheric reentry had caused most of the paint to bubble up. Flakes of it littered her desk.  _Fitting,_  Shepard thought dully.  _I’m told burnt flesh bubbles, too._  The package next to it contained the dogtags she’d recovered from Alchera, and Garrus had finished sealing the box— Shepard’s hands had been shaking so badly, she couldn’t get a straight strip of omnifilm across the seal.

“Want to talk?” he finally asked, as her fingers twisted around each other.

She didn’t reply. What was there to say? That twenty pieces of metal couldn’t bring good men and women back from the dead? That somehow she was worth billions to whoever the Illusive Man was, but her crew— better people than her, in many cases— weren’t even worth enough Helium-3 to put them to rest?

That, as stupid as it sounded, packing those cold, unfeeling pieces of metal to ship to Hackett somehow felt like losing them all over again?

“Yes,” Garrus murmured. Shepard realized she’d been whispering out loud when he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, tucking her head against his cowl. She shuddered against him, too exhausted to cry and too empty to fight. Too lost and all together too dead. “That’s exactly what you say.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, I'm going to be skipping Day 8. The prompt is "A Long-Lost OTP" and unfortunately, the way my brain is wired, long-lost means just that. I'd have to go back and rewatch or reread or something to write about because everything has been overshadowed by Bioware currently. I may come back and write it eventually, but for now, I'm setting Day 8 aside.


	8. August Challenge: Day 9 - An Argument (Cullen/Inquisitor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not implying, I am _outright saying_ that you took an unnecessary risk!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: braining is remarkably hard today, so instead of writing something totally new, here's a snippet of an argument from the LSotA rewrite. (told you i'm working on it XD)
> 
>  **Chapter Title:** Blood on the Branches

Day 9 - An Argument

Fandom: Dragon Age

Characters: Dorian Pavus, Isera Lavellan, Cullen Rutherford, Iron Bull

***

* * *

 

***

“Who attacked?” Cullen asked. Though his voice was quiet, almost a purr, Dorian shivered at the edge of fury in it. His eyes swept over the scene, taking in the blood on Isera’s face; it had stained down her tunic in great, red swaths, looking a good deal worse than it was. “I want their names.”

Bull laughed. That dangerous gaze flicked to him and the big man tilted his head; it wasn’t an obvious challenge, but it did make Cullen pause in his attempt to murder Dorian using only his eyes. “Are you going to wage war on a forest cat, Commander? She wandered too near one and it felt cornered.”

 _I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a Qunari spy is good at lying,_ Dorian mused as he carefully held the pieces of Isera’s cheek together and began the healing spell again. _This wound wasn’t caused by tooth or claw._ This time, with her on her best behavior—and wasn’t it _interesting_ that it took Cullen being furious for her to settle down—the spell finally took.

Flesh knit back together, leaving only a thin white scar that bisected the branches of her _vallaslin_. He repeated the process with the other wounds he could reach and before Bull had made the Commander growl more than once, Dorian settled back on the bench and wiped the cold sweat from his brow. Exhausting his mana always left him feeling shaken and queasy.

“I have to get these to Adan before they wilt more.” Isera tugged her hands free of Bull’s grasp and stood, listing slightly to one side as she shook off the effects of the healing. “A lot of pilgrims have colds and Embrium is rare he—”

Cullen didn’t step from the position he’d taken beside the door—Varric had disappeared sometime during the healing—but he seemed to loom over the elf, making her stutter to a halt. “You are going nowhere but to rest, my lady,” he bit out, voice precise and clipped. “I will find someone to take those to the healers.”

Dorian watched as Isera’s face hardened to match Cullen’s grim expression. The inner circle had noticed that whenever their Herald got stubborn, her jaw firmed and her chin came up, as if in a dare. Her body drew up in a tight, straight line and she managed to pull regality around her like a shroud, turning her bloodstained clothes and sweaty hair into badges of honor.

 _This must be what she’d have looked like as Keeper,_ Dorian thought, impressed despite himself. _With a bluff like that, she could give the Magisterium a run for its gold._

“I have duties to attend, Commander,” she said, voice cool; it was a far cry from the pained sound the first healing spell had pulled from her. “If you think—”

“At least _one_ of us would be thinking,” Cullen snarled. His armor clanked as he crossed his arms, fists clenching.

“If you are implying—” She started to say, before he cut her off hotly.

“I’m not implying, I am _outright saying_ that you took an unnecessary risk! And you have lost too much blood to go traipsing around Haven looking like something that stumbled out of a refugee camp. There are people watching your every move! You are the _Herald_ of _Andraste._ ”

The silence that fell was cold enough to raise the hair on the back of Dorian’s neck in a manner he hadn’t felt since his first real trip to the Fade. Whatever was between them was too fragile for this kind of fight; he could read Isera’s fury in the ramrod stiffness of her back and the way her fists balled up and smoldered.

Cullen took a breath and visibly tried to force himself to relax, his voice dropping into a lower, calmer register.

“What if it hadn’t been an animal, Lady? What if it had been demons, or anti-elf racists? Or any number of enemies we have managed to acquire by trying to save the world?” He gestured to the bloodstain on her robe. “You weren’t even wearing armor and you didn’t take anyone with you. This could have been much worse. I-- the Inquisition cannot lose you to poor judgement.”

Given the way her eyes fixed on Cullen’s face, unwavering, Dorian was almost impressed that nothing started to smoke from the fury she projected into the room-- he had heard the story of how Isera had gotten her nickname more than once.

When she finally responded, Isera’s voice was so soft, they all had to strain to hear her. “I’ve lived my entire life in danger, Commander.” She took a shuddering breath, clenching her hands tighter until the barely-visible flame was crushed out of sight. “What ifs mean nothing to me. I’m a female Dalish apostate. Three different kinds of danger have dogged my heels from the moment I drew my first breath.”

“Lady—”

“I am not some helpless damsel, Cullen. Do not ever treat me like one again.” She shoved the bag of herbs at him and walked through the door, slipping around him without a hint of contact. Dorian thought the silence that followed in her wake was more powerful, and far more menacing, than if she’d slammed the door behind her.


	9. August Challenge: Day 10 - An AU (FenHawke)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can you _believe--”_ Hawke spun on her heel, pacing the opposite way down her narrow trailer. She looked over at her best friend and sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Could you stop playing with my cat and at least pretend to be sympathetic?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Chapter Title:** Kiss the Girl

**Day 10 - An AU**

**Fandom:**  Dragon Age

 **Characters:**  Marian Hawke, Fenris, Garrett Hawke, Varric Tethras, Merrill, Anders

 **Setting:**  Hollywood Modern AU; Veterinarian!Anders AU: Sexually Tense Coworkers AU; Modern Thedas AU

 **Note:**  This plot bunny wouldn’t leave me alone, so it feels like Day 11 might be a continuation.

***

***

“If there is a future to be had,” Fenris murmured, his lips hovering near Hawke’s, “I will walk into it gladly at your side.” His gorgeous green eyes were fixed on hers and Hawke fumbled for a moment, a half-smile playing across her mouth; she almost wanted to believe him. With the smallest sound, Fenris leaned in, his gauntleted fingers sliding through her hair as he kissed her.

“And CUT!” Varric hollered over the hooting of the studio assistants as he leaned her against the wall, her arms snaked around his neck. “Hawke! I said cut!”

Coughing and rubbing the back of her hand over her mouth, Hawke pulled away from Fenris and stomped over to her friend and director, lips still stupid and tingling. “Tell me,” she began, a growl in her voice, “please. Tell me that is the  _last time_  I have to kiss him for this stupid movie.”

“Actually, there’s one more, after the final battle!” Varric’s assistant trilled, her hands clasped together over a noteboard; Merrill was rarely seen without a blinding smile for everyone. “You two are so lovely on film together, Varr--”

“That’s enough, Daisy,” Varric hissed. “Hawke, that was _beautiful_.” Hawke narrowed her eyes, fully aware of Fenris stalking over to tower over Varric next to her. He spoke before she could hone in on Merrill’s slip.

“Do _not_  write another romance scene,” he snapped, voice more gravelly than normal. “I should get hazard pay for having to kiss that harpy!”

“Harpy?!” Hawke screeched, rounding on Fenris as her fists began to crackle with lightning. “I’ll show you a  _harpy_ , you memory-less, little-- Garrett, put me  _down_.” Garrett, Hawke’s twin brother and a valuable member of the security team (precisely for moments like this), had hooked her around the waist, putting himself between her and her co-star as he hauled her backwards.

Fenris just smirked at her.

“That is  _deliberate provocation,_  you  _ass_ ,” Hawke swore over her brother’s shoulder as he rounded the corner. “I should have taken your other eyebrow off, too!”

***

“Can you  _believe--_ ” Hawke spun on her heel, pacing the opposite way down her narrow trailer. She looked over at her best friend and sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Could you stop playing with my cat and at least pretend to be sympathetic?”

Anders smiled up at her. His face was thin and long, mouth a touch too wide, but he’d been her first love and there wasn’t a more handsome man in all of Thedas. Even after their love story had been interrupted by college and then by Anders’ clinic, he was still Her Standard For Men. And she definitely was not thinking that Fenris, that  _broody_ , snarling elf with his-- his stupid  _tattoos_  and  _mysterious past_  and stupidly pretty green eyes could give him a run for his money.

 _Infuriating bastard,_  she thought sourly.

“Hawke, you’ve been complaining about him since he got the role of your love interest,” Anders pointed out, his smile growing smug. “You were complaining about him  _before you met him._ ”

Hawke huffed and threw herself on the couch next to him, immediately curling under his outstretched arm. “And?” she grumbled. “Varric told me it was historical action, not  _romance._ ”

“Well,” Anders continued, one hand running down her arm while the other scratched her purring traitor of a hellbeast, “from what I’ve heard from Garrett, maybe he’s not so bad. Hey!”

He jerked back, flattening himself against the back of the couch as Hawke’s head shot up and narrowly missed his chin. Incensed, she swung her legs over and straddled his lap, her hands pinning his shoulders back. “How could you  _say_  that?” she demanded as the cat landed on the floor, giving them a disgusted glare. “Anders, stop laughing!”

“Love, if you could see your face,” he murmured, eyes going soft and fond as he brought his hand up to cup her cheek. “You really don’t know yet, do you?”

“There’s a lot of things I don’t know,” Hawke retorted, sliding her hands from his shoulders down his chest; the slight hitch in Anders’ breathing was no less thrilling to hear now than it had been ten years ago. “But…” She trailed off and leaned down until her nose brushed his with a small spark. “There’s a lot of things I  _do_  know.”

Anders groaned as his hands found her hips, clever fingers rucking the hem of her shirt up to dance across her skin. “Why do you torment me like this?” It was clearly a rhetorical question as he closed the gap between them, pulling her down for a kiss.

Hawke’s murmur of, “Because you love it,” was lost against his neck as he stood, her legs locked around his hips.

***

“Have you considered,” Anders asked later, hand trailing sparks in the air above their heads, “that perhaps you don’t actually hate him?”

“You want to talk about the bastard now?” Hawke rolled over and propped herself up on an elbow, incredulous. “Ten minutes after catching your breath, you want to talk about  _Fenris_?”

“I’m just saying.” He brushed his still-sparking hand across her cheek, smiling. “As much as I love you-- and you  _know_  I love you-- this isn’t our future, birdie. Our ship sailed, even if we keep revisiting the port.” His browwaggling was over-exaggerated, but he had a point.

She groaned and laid her head on his chest. As his heartbeat filled her ear, Hawke couldn’t help but remember. It seemed like so long ago that she’d had him in her arms, their dreams tangled together in the Fade. Their lives were supposed to have been messy and glorious, twined around each other’s until she couldn’t tell where Marian Hawke stopped and Anders began. They’d talked about the future, about marrying. Having a family.

If she closed her eyes, she could still see the dreamed-up children they’d talked about having late one night. A little girl with the blue Amell eyes and her father’s tawny hair. A hazel-eyed boy with black curls and a penchant for ice spells. It had seemed like such a  _good_  dream. But in the end… that’s all it was. Marian had started off in magic, determined to become an Enchanter in the College of Magi; somehow, she’d ended up in the drama program where she’d stumbled over aspiring-writer Varric Tethras.

Maybe if they’d gone to the same college, majored in magic together. Maybe if Carver hadn’t joined the Templars right out of high school and broke their mother’s heart. Maybe if Anders hadn’t found out that he had steady hands and a love of animals. So many maybes and no real answers.

“All right,” she conceded at last, running her fingers through the sparse golden hair across his chest. “You seem to know something I don’t, so spill it.”

***

“You had me worried,” Fenris whispered, crushing her against his breastplate. Lightning forked overhead, turning the rain covering Kirkwall into silver. “I thought you weren’t coming out of there. Orsino--”

“Gone.” Hawke’s fingers curled in his silver hair as she shook, the fire fading from her fingertips. “He’s gone.”

Fenris pulled back, cupping her face. “But we’re still here,” he murmured, brushing his lips across hers. Hawke knew he had a second line, but Varric always went on about “feeling the character” this and “improvisation” that. So that’s exactly what she did: winged it.

Her fingers tightened in Fenris’ hair as she lifted herself almost off the cobblestones, crushing her mouth to his. She heard his sharp, surprised inhale before he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her even higher, his teeth on her lower lip. Hawke couldn’t stop the moan that tumbled out of her as he licked away the sting, his odd lyrium tattoo flashing in the small space between them.

The staff she carried fell to the ground and Fenris kicked it away with a growl, ripping himself away from kissing her breathless just long enough to make sure he didn’t trip on it as he walked her backwards. The water dripping down the Gallows wall soaked the back of Hawke’s robes almost instantly, but she didn’t have time to feel the cold before Fenris was pressed against her. Body heat blazed out from him as his mouth found hers, their hands tangling together.

“Fen--”

 _Sweet Maker,_  she had time to think, right before Fenris licked into her mouth and any coherent thought left in her head flew away whistling. Somewhere, very far away, she could hear someone yelling but when Fenris bit her lip a second time, actually  _growling_  against her and practically vibrating with want as he seared her with kiss after steaming, wet kiss, she stopped noticing.

There was no sound but the way Fenris’ armor clicked as she arched against it. The rain kept falling, running over her face, but the only thing she could feel was his hands as he found a weak seam in her robes and  _ripped_  to get at her skin. Hawke gasped against his mouth, every sense filled with him, every nerve ending in her body on fire and alive. Her fingers sparked in his hair, control over her magic going haywire as his lyrium lit up and he tilted his head to nip at her neck.

***

Varric Tethras looked at the raw cut of the film-- Hawke’s fingers were  _glowing_  and was Fenris  _growling_?-- and looked at Merrill, bopping anxiously on her feet.

“It’s a good take, yes?” she asked.

Varric looked at the notated script in his lap, sighed deeply, and shoved it off onto the floor.

“Better ending than I had planned, anyway,” he admitted. He turned to his assistant. “Gather the writing team. Maybe we can have some voice-overs to tie up the loose ends.”

***

Hawke sat in the small dressing room to the side of the set. While most of the cast by and large preferred their trailers, Hawke had asked Varric to put this room in.

Living with anxiety could be difficult. She knew her case was mild, that Bethany and Carver suffered more from the condition. She’d only had a panic attack once while on set, but it had derailed shooting for three days-- and Varric never  _had_  been able to save that one box of props from the fire. This room had saved a lot more sets than that, afterwards.

Merrill had murmured something soothing as she’d pressed the warm towel into her hands and discreetly guided her to it, but Hawke couldn’t remember what it was. Everything around her was fogged, time slipping in gaps and odd lengths. She swore she could still feel Fenris’ armor-- plastic and fake leather-- pressed against her, and the gaps in the seams of her costume were embarrassingly real.

Maker, she’d  _wanted_  his hands on her and hadn’t given a damn who’d have seen. Never had a kiss so completely obliterated the world around her, but damned if that broody elf hadn’t shaken her to the very core. What the hell had that been, anyway? Sure, she’d initiated the kiss but… shit, maybe Anders _was_ right.

“You’re one hell of an actress, Hawke,” Fenris’ voice interrupted from the doorway. He’d already changed out of the prop armor, leaving him stripped to the waist as he toweled off. The sight of him half-clothed really shouldn’t have made her mouth go dry and her heart-rate double-- the few love scenes Varric had written into his movie had involved both of them in various states of undress and her tongue had certainly never dropped out on the floor before.

But then again, those scenes were all scripted. They were just doing a job. But now she knew what he tasted like, what sounds he made when she slicked her tongue across his. She’d felt his hands  _ripping her clothes off_  and that… that seemed to make all the difference.

“And of course,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You’re not even listening.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to hide her shaking hands in the towel. “I was-- you-- it doesn’t matter. What were you saying?”

“I said, you’re a damn good actress.” Those green eyes bored into her as he rubbed the silver strands of his hair. “You almost made me believe you cared.” Was it just her or was there a trace of bitterness there? Did he  _want_  her to care? Did  _she_  want to?

 _I think I do._  What a terrifying thought.

“Part of the job, right?” she asked instead. “What are you doing after filming tonight?”

Fenris blinked, his drying tapering off until the towel hung around his neck, and he stared at her.

“I just--” How could she make this seem casual. “I’ve been pretty hard on you and-- I thought I could buy you dinner. Start over.” Carver’s wry voice floated through her head:  _Smooth move, Mar. I could sand a patio with that kind of smooth._

The silence between them grew awkward, until the only sound was the drip of rain from her hair on the floor. Hawke forced a laugh, even knowing it sounded too loud, too false.

“I mean, you’re probably-- you have things, I’m su--”

“Make it drinks and I’ll do it,” Fenris interrupted her, the sharp point of his ears reddening as he rubbed the towel over them. “Contrary to popular belief, not knowing who I am leaves my schedule fairly open. It’s you or my punching bag and I’m not sure it can handle another date with me so soon.” His smile was small and bitter, a grimace more than anything else.

It broke Hawke’s heart a little to see.

“Drinks, then,” she confirmed, giving him a tentative smile. “Eight okay with you?”

***

 


	10. August Challenge: Day 12 - Major Character Death (Inquisitor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes less than three hundred paces for the world to change.
> 
>  **Chapter Title:** Dawn

**August Fic Challenge**

**Day 12**  - Major Character Death

 **Featuring:**  Isera Lavellan, Iron Bull, Dorian Pavus, Varric Tethras, Keeper Hawen

 **Warnings:** Descriptions of violence, mild body horror

*** 

***

It takes less than three hundred paces for the world to change.

“On your left, Sparkler!” Varric yells, the distinctive  _twang_  and howl combination signaling another wounded demon.

Dorian grunts and swings his staff, arms aching as the rotten-fruit sound of wood hitting the shade’s body is drowned out by Bull’s fierce laugh.  _One bloody day,_  he thinks, a jet of violet flames engulfing the monster as it gasps and lurches back towards the rift.  _One bloody day without demons._

“Watch where you’re stepping, Bull!” he hears Isera call, a laugh under the reprimand. In a way, she enjoys these fights as much as the Qunari does.  _At least the demons don’t treat me like the second coming of Andraste,_  she’d shot him over dinner one night. The title of Herald and Inquisitor weighs heavy on her, no matter how often she reassures her friends and lover that she’s fine. “Some of us are short!”

“Not my fault you didn’t use your rage to grow, boss!” Bull laughs again, grunting with effort as he swings that ridiculously large hammer. For a comeback, it’s weaker than normal, but Dorian figures his  _amatus_  is too busy having fun to worry about parrying words as well as weapons. For a Qunari, Bull is a master of witty repartee, and aside from the stuck-up elf Dorian shares his library with, his favorite banter comes from Isera. Dorian waits for Isera’s riposte, but the only sound is a strangled  _hurk_.

He looks over his shoulder in time to see the glimmer of fadelight still shining on the Terror’s limbs even as it strikes, slashing the elf with such force, she spins and lands hard on her knees. “ISERA!” He can’t help the shout, like ice tumbling down his throat. Dorian doesn’t see the second blow, but for a moment-- for a wild, frightened moment-- it looks as though the demon’s claws had gone right through his friend. “Isera!”

“Boss!”

Bull drops his hammer, its weight making the ground nearest them shake as he  _sprints_  towards the demon and rips it backwards, flinging it towards Dorian. In a move as easy as breath, Dorian wreaths it in ice a second before Varric’s bolt shatters the thing’s head-- but not before Dorian sees the frozen droplets of blood on its claws.  _An illusion,_  he tells himself, shaking.  _A trick of poor angles._  Isera staggers, one arm wrapped around her waist even as she leans on Bull.

“--lp me!” she demands, face tight with pain and effort. “I have to close it!”

When he moves, when he takes a step, it feels like he’s caught in one of the torn time slips from Redcliffe; everything is moving oddly, every step takes herculean effort. But finally, he reaches her side and hooks an arm under her shoulders, turning her to face the bleeding rift. The Veil swirls, rushing past him and coalescing around her hand as she thrusts it upwards, a beam of fadelight connecting pale flesh to open wound. The jerk as she seals the rift is as strong and savage as he’s ever seen, but her brow is beaded with sweat and she stumbles against him.

“Ashes?” Varric’s voice is quiet in a way Dorian has never heard, almost fearful. But that’s not right, is it? He’s never heard Varric  _afraid_  before. Angry, protective, even incredulous, but always laced with an underlying laugh, like the world is one of his books and he’s seeing the joke between the lines.

Dorian turns to reassure the dwarf, to ask what had spooked him, when there’s the slightest shifting of gravel as Isera falls to her knees. In the silence, he can hear tentative birdsong, as animals scared away by the demons begin to return. The whisper of the river as it laps against ancient, elven stones is a song that, on any other day, would be pleasant. His own breath sounds loud and harsh in his ear, and it is then that he notices just how  _red_  Isera’s arm is.

It is then-- with birdsong trilling around him and the singing of water over stone-- that he sees the pool of blood. It’s small, smaller than he’d have thought, but it is a deep, unsettling color that speaks of internal trauma and the balance of life and death.

He catches her shoulders as she slips in the blood, and the way she trembles against him is unnatural, she who had always been strong enough to carry the burden she’d never asked for.

“Oh,  _kid_ ,” Varric sighs, and Dorian wants to snap at him to stop, to rip that mourning note out of his voice. His chest aches like it’s being wrung open, the words  _no_  and  _you can’t_  and  _don’t leave_  bouncing around off of his ribs, sticking in his throat like the mud the cooks pass off as Ferelden casserole.

“Kadan,” Bull says, his big hands restless, moving like he doesn’t know whether to touch Dorian or Isera or the hammer still resting upright in a pile of demon ichor.

“We’re not far from the Dalish camp,” someone says and it takes Dorian a moment to recognize his own voice. Surely that’s not  _him_  that sounds so desperate, so shrill and grief-stricken. He’d always prided himself on his voice, had always endured Isera’s good-natured teasing about smooth lines and if he could sing as well as he could speak, perhaps she wouldn’t have to bribe the Chargers to tolerate him joining their drinking songs.

He clears his throat and tries again, not looking down at the girl in his arms. “We’re not far from the Dalish camp and there’s a healer there.”

When he thinks about it later, he won’t remember Bull taking her from his grasp, he won’t remember Varric cursing as he slips on a loose stone and almost breaks an ankle. But he’ll remember the slow bubble of blood from under Isera’s armor, glinting like polished bloodstone-- he’ll remember the half-hysterical laugh that he chokes on at the pun, swiping sweat and tears and dirt from his face.

He’ll remember the smallest sigh as Isera’s breath rattles in her chest, her hand half-stretching towards him as Bull  _leaps_  over the stones in their way.

It takes about three hundred paces to go from the entrances of the elven baths to the Dalish camp-- and it is still too far.

“Andaran ati--” Whatever is present on Dorian’s face cuts the ancient Keeper’s greeting off, and he struggles for breath as Bull wades his way through the camp like he belongs there, barking a command for the healer.

“Healer,” Dorian finally gasps out, and as if the words tearing themselves free of his throat weren’t bad enough, he has to throttle back a sob as Varric puffs his way around one of the landships, reaching for him like he’s going to fall over.

“Sparkler--”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Dorian spits, drawing himself up to his full height. He may not be an elf, but damned if he isn’t going to do everything an altus from Minrathous has in his power to keep his friend alive.

***

There is a small group gathering around one of the landships, the sails pulled down so that the healer can see. A murmur goes through them as Dorian approaches, the children scattering before him like leaves in this damn southern wind.

The Keeper had laid a gentle, wrinkled hand on his and said, “We are close to Var Bellanaris. She can rest easy there.”

He hears the quiet song before he reaches the aravel, notes and words and  _grief_  making it through the thundering of his heart, and he barely feels the burn of wrenching his wrist out of Bull’s grasp as he shoulders his way through. Behind the aravel, he sees a small group of halla watching him with those big, dark eyes-- eyes too sorrowful and intelligent for beasts.

 _I like it here_ , Isera whispers in his memory, firelight bathing her in an ethereal glow.  _I’ve missed the halla._

 _What about them?_  He’d asked, watching her fingers thread stalks of embrium in a braid to dry.

She’d looked at him then, something serious and  _tired_  flickering across her face.  _Halla guide us to Falon’din, to eternity._

“No,” he tells them, tells himself. Tells anyone who will listen, even this Falon’din, whoever he is. “No.”

The healer climbs down from the aravel, her fingers red up to the knuckle with blood. Whatever she says is lost in the pounding of his heart, in the soft whisper of, “ _Kadan,_ ” from behind him.

In Varric’s soft, “Shit, kid.”

In the denial echoing in his chest.

Amid gasps, Dorian heaves himself into the landship, stopping short as he almost knocks his head on the mast. Isera lays in front of him, hands-- bloodied, knuckles still bruised and nails torn down to the quick-- folded in soft repose over her armor. Someone has wiped the leather clean of blood, but he can still see it in the slashed straps.

He half-expects her to sit up and give him one of those wicked smirks, the scarred corner of her mouth stretching up towards those sparkling eyes.  _Dorian,_  she’d say, and he’d smile and tell her.

She can’t be gone, he reasons with himself. She can’t, because…

Because he hasn’t told her about the letters from Felix, the ones that spell out a good-bye even in the friendship and love pouring from the page.

Because he hasn’t told her that she’s his only friend left. That when she looks at him, she doesn’t see the ancient name of Pavus, or the way some of the Inquisition still whispers  _Tevinter_  like a slur. She doesn’t care who warms his bed, except to tell him one drunken night that Bull’s gone soppy over him and she thinks it’s cute. He hasn’t told her that he loves the way she looks at him and only sees  _Dorian_  and nothing else.

Because… because how can he tell Cullen that the  _one time_  he wasn’t fighting at her side, she…

It is then that Dorian realizes he can’t deny it anymore. Isera is not going to sit up and snark at him, she isn’t going to drape herself across his lap and break down those cold, distant emotional walls one warm hairruffle at a time. He will never be able to tease her about kissing Cullen on the battlements, about the scruffy wolfskin she lined her cloak with.

He will never be able to tell her how much he loves her, this quiet, fierce woman who marched her way into a heart he hadn’t even known was broken.

“You could have had the power to save her,” Isera hisses, eyes snapping open, bloodshot and milky with death. When her body sits up, there is a gut-churning,  _sucking_  sound as her fatal wound squelches against the armor that failed to protect her. “We told you, Dorian.”

“No,” he whispers, unable to back away. The  _thing_  using his friend’s body twitches, moving in skittering, jerking fashion. “Begone,” he tries to say, but the words are weak and powerless. There’s a cold hand wrapping around his throat and he shudders but doesn’t fight back. He can’t bring himself to fight.

Not against her.

“Dorian,” the demon whispers, black blood dripping from the corner of Isera’s mouth. “ _Dor--_ ”

***

“--RIAN!”

There’s a hot  _crack_  against his face and Dorian sits up, sputtering. Everything around him is dark, save for a faint green haze lighting Isera’s face. Behind her, the flap of their tent is billowing in the wind, and he can taste the rain on the breeze. Even in the fading dark, he can see the dense thicket of trees they’ve camped in, and the words  _Emerald Graves_  float blearily across his mind.

Isera raises her hand like she’s going to slap him again, and he grabs it-- it’s wonderfully warm and soft in his grip, and he can feel the faint thrum of her pulse under his fingers. With a sobbing sound he’ll deny til his dying day, Dorian grabs her and hauls her closer, burying his face in the crook of her neck. The smell of rain-damp skin and elfroot floods his nose and it’s all Dorian can do not to cry.

Isera’s arms hesitantly come up around him, her fingers threading through his hair. “Shh,” she whispers. “You were screaming.”

“You were dead,” he mutters. It’s not as sharp as a clapback should be, and in the shakiness of his voice, he can hear the fear still haunting him as the Fade reluctantly releases him. “In the Plains.”

“I should have  _been_  dead,” she admits, going still in his grasp. Then her fingers resume sliding through his hair, and they both pretend she isn’t trembling. “You and Bull got me to the camp, remember?”

Dorian doesn’t say anything, but his arms tighten around her. With his eyes screwed shut, he can still see the blood seeping from under her armor, still hear the death-rattle in her lungs. Now that he’s awake, he can remember the frantic run to the Dalish camp, the way Bull had dug deep into his stamina reserves and pulled ahead, leaping over the boulders to grab a healer. He can remember mashing elfroot and pouring potions down Isera’s throat until she’d threatened to rip every hair on his head out by the root if he made her take another.

He’d cried, then. Laughed and cried and told her that if she lived through the night, he’d let her.

“Dorian--”

“I love you,” he breathed, pulling back to lean his forehead against hers. “I don’t think I’ve told you that.”

Isera smiled sweetly, her hands coming up to cup his jaw as she presses a smacking kiss between his brows. “I love you too,” she says, right before smirking at him and adding, “although we’re both definitively taken and Cullen might have something to say about--”

Dorian threw himself back with a groan and if it hadn’t been so childish and he hadn’t been so  _obscenely_ grateful for the easy switch back to their normal friendly bickering, he might have swatted her with his pillow. “Bitch,” he says companionably as she snickers and crawls over him back to her own bedroll.

“Takes one,” she shoots back, but her fingers twine with his as the thunder sounds overhead. He knows that if he looks over, he’d be able to see the thick, shiny scar that stretches from her ribs to her navel; she won’t admit that the rough shirt she sleeps in is Cullen’s, but the way it hangs off her thin frame says it for her, and it’s missing enough buttons that it gaps when she turns over.

Dorian stays awake as her breathing evens out, listening to the sounds of the patrolling guards, the loud yawn of his  _amatus_  in the next tent. Cole sits by the doused fire, smiling up at the clouds.

“She’s home now,” he hears Cole murmur, and when he sits up, the boy is looking at him with those big, disconcerting eyes. “The lion and the dragon both protect her, surround her with warmth. When you’re here, she can forget the whispers that kept her song quiet.” He smiles back up at the sky, and Dorian finds himself wondering what those spirit eyes see beyond the stormclouds. “Now she can sing as herself.”

 _Kaffas_ , but he’s too tired for the boy’s word puzzles. “Excuse me?”

But the boy is gone when Dorian blinks next, and he lays back down, listening to Isera’s quiet breathing.

For now, they’re alive, and the dawn is coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dorian's friendship is super important to me, okay? out of all the characters in this game, i just absolutely fell in platonic love with him. so yes, i couldn't _keep_ her dead.


	11. August Challenge: Day 13 - Hurt/Comfort (Carver/Anders)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian drops his head into his hands, groaning out a laugh as the two of them lean on each other and sing another off-key verse of some Ferelden drinking song that half the pub, despite being full of Free Marchers and Tal-Vashoth and Maker-knew-who-else, joins in.
> 
> It makes Carver want to laugh and smile and storm out the door all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 - this is a continuation or happening in the same universe as chapter 2's DA2 canders
> 
> 2 - this was also a kiss meme prompt fill on my tumblr

15 - A kiss because I have literally been watching you all night and I can’t take anymore

***

***

Wicked Grace nights are a special kind of torture.

Not that Carver doesn’t enjoy them, which he supposes makes him some sort of bloody self-loathing masochist, but there are just certain things about the unruly, somehow broken-in-all-the-right-ways group the Hawkes found themselves fallen into. He knows the anger’s written all over his face, his mouth drawn into a scowl that few look past, but he just— he can’t  _help_  it.

It has nothing to do with the way they gather around Their Table, a great ugly scarred thing older than Varric by double or more. It isn’t the indulgent headshakes Norah gives them every time the volume gets out of hand, or Corff trying to out-bullshit Varric—not that such a thing is possible, in Carver’s mind.

No, Carver knows that whatever bothers him about their friends, whatever’s under his skin and scraping daggered nails across his nerves, is part of  _him._  It’s  _his_  problem, and not the thousand little convenient targets he could name: The way Varric sits at the head of the table, if it has such a thing, and smiles that little knowing smirk as he looks at them. The way Merrill giggles, already giddy on stolen sips of ale (they’d learned early that she couldn’t have a full one and stay upright). The way Fenris traces the column of Marian’s neck with the tips of his gauntlet, blatantly unsubtle and not-quite-sickeningly in love.

The way Marian laughs as Isabela slings one long, brown thigh over his lap and  _smirks_  at him, all waggling brows and drunk-but-not-as-much-as-she-pretends lash flutters.

The way Bethany  _isn’t_ here to meet these infuriating, wonderful people— he can’t help but wonder where she’d have slotted herself in at, his other half. Whether she’d be conning Varric with a smile like sunshine, or keeping Merrill from making herself sick, or maybe even surprising one of those rare, barking laughs out of Fenris, softening the hard edges of his all-too-Tevinter manner.

It’s these small, foolish thoughts that stick in Carver’s throat, that pick at the ever-burning fury in his gut that he’s tried so  _hard_  to temper. These little gestures and habits and—and  _caricatures_  make him feel alone and hollow, the last, dying peal of a bell struck years and continents ago.

His eyes follow Marian as she pries herself from the elf’s side to dance with Anders, the two of them tipsy and laughing, smiles like brilliant half-moons under the dim Hanged Man lights. And Sebastian drops his head into his hands, groaning out a laugh as the two of them lean on each other and sing another off-key verse of some Ferelden drinking song that half the pub, despite being full of Free Marchers and Tal-Vashoth and Maker-knows-who-else, joins in.

It makes Carver want to laugh and smile and storm out the door all at once.

And then Anders shoos his sister back to the table, shooting Carver a glance across the crowded pub, amused and possessive and  _promising_  and heat spreads through Carver’s blood so fast, chasing the heels of melancholy, he almost wonders if the mage has cast a spell on him after all. He wants to hate that Anders knows him well enough to know he’s brooding, that Anders— and lately,  _only_  Anders— can tease out a smile or at least a softening of his hard gaze, but it’s all—

He doesn’t even know.

It’s  _something._

“I think you have an allergy to happiness,” Isabela tells him later, palming another card from her one remaining boot. Her bare toes keep creeping up the line of Carver’s calf, and while it’s not enough to be a threat—they both know a few stolen kisses mean nothing binding and that Carver leans somewhere else, however reluctantly—it’s enough to turn his Ferelden-pale skin red and telling.

“Could you not?” he asks, eyes flickering between his sister, the pirate sprawled across his lap, and the way Anders looks too hard at his hand for a man who’d folded two turns ago. He’s not even sure  _what_  he’s asking, whether it’s the touch or the warm comfort of her draped across him or for the too-close truth of her statement to not sting so much.

“Oh, boo,” she purrs, toes finding the crease of his roughspun trousers and digging in behind his knee to make him curse and jump. “You’ve gotten all muscly since you went over Templar. What’s wrong with a bit of fun?”

Carver sighs and rolls his eyes, burying the fondness deep under the brooding mask everyone expects to see as he tosses in his coppers. Marian’s face lights up in that bright, fierce grin he only sees in a good fight or on a bad Grace night, and he knows the coins are as good as gone. “So much for winning my dignity back,” he growls as she tosses a handful of drakes and daggers at him and gleefully rakes his coins to her patch of the table. 

There’s a voice in the back of his head, in the spot that always quietly belonged to Bethie, chuckling the way she always had when he let her win, too.

_She’s learned, hasn’t she, Big Brother?_

“You do know she’s cheating?” Anders calls, not quite looking at him as he tosses Varric his own cards, long since beaten.

“And badly,” ‘Bela agrees from her half-slouch. Her thigh slips from his lap and Carver sighs in relief as feeling starts to return, barely blinking when Isabela whips out one of her stilettos and pins his sister’s sleeve to the table with a smirk just this side of friendly. “If you’re going to cheat, kitten, give us the courtesy of being good at it.”

Marian, bless her bright little soul, winks obnoxiously at Carver and shrugs. “I’m a mage, not a rogue,” she laughs, unoffended as she tugs free-- the holes in her sleeves tattle that this is a habit between the two of them, time-honored and long-standing.

“Then  _you_  can buy the next round, Hawke,” Varric says easily, the battered cards seeming to float between his hands with a soft  _shhh_  sound. “Since you’re so generous and not a swindling little thief.”

_Ha! Serves her right,_  Bethany giggles, and he can almost feel the weight of her arms draping over his shoulders, invading his space like she had a thousand times growing up. Like she never will again.

Carver loses the thread of the cheerful argument that follows, eyes closed. 

That he sometimes hears Bethany’s voice in this pub, this liminal space where hours don’t quite seem to exist and nothing is  _really_  impossible if you know the right people, doesn’t bother him. He’s glad for the company, especially when he feels Anders’ foot gently nudging his, concern on his face.

“Gallows tonight?” Anders murmurs in his ear, the two of them watching ‘Bela’s hips sway as she drags Marian to the bar to finally pay for her trickery.

“Switched shifts with Thrask,” Carver mutters, cheeks going hot with— not quite shame but something he can’t put a name to. The older Knight had given him an exaggerated wink as Carver asked for the extended time, and sighed something wistful about young love. “Got almost a full day before I go back.”

The low, interested noise Anders makes— and the there-and-then-gone brush of lips across his ear— is enough to have Carver blindly grabbing for his ale, for the bowl of slightly-burnt biscuits (Marian admits that Orana had given up trying to teach her to cook, but held on to some hope for baking, the poor girl), for the deck of cards to make sure Isabela hadn’t stolen any for good. 

Anything so that he doesn’t have to look at that mild, smiling face.

This— this  _thing_  between them is still new, still creaky at the joints and tight-fitting. Whether it’s the ale or the company or the way each of their friends had cottoned on to the  _stupidly_  unsubtle looks Anders gives him, there’s an itch under Carver’s skin that makes his shoulders hunch. 

He wishes, for the eleventh time that night (which, hey, at least he’s getting better?) that Bethany was there to tease him with the others. Only she could take a look at the stormclouds on his face, at the formless, nameless anger in his blood he could never quite shake, and draw a laugh out of it.

_Poor Faith,_  she’d say, eyes going bright and sly and still happy for him,  _however will she cope without your contributions now that Anders has gone and snatched you off the market?_

And he could swipe at her as she danced away, a laugh on her lips as the three Hawkes fought and snapped like pups. Marian is bright and fierce, with a heart bigger than the coastline they’d sailed around trying to flee the Blight; she has a penchant for coming home with strays charmed by her teasing words and guileless eyes. And Carver is her opposite in every way, prone to fits of anger and sullen in a way their parents had scratched their heads over.

Bethie had been the middle ground, able to bridge either extreme with a smile or a hug or a bucket of water dumped over his head at the first sign of a fight.

_Maker, I miss you._

“You’re thinking too much again,” Anders says softly, and Carver has to blink his burning eyes to focus on the mage who’s curled up next to him, concern and something close to love written all over those honeyed eyes. The others are all preoccupied— Fenris is kissing Marian on the stairwell (Carver tries not to frown but that is his  _sister_  for the Maker’s sake), Isabela is propping Merrill up on her shoulder and stroking her hair, something possessive and tender in her movement. Varric has had the most sensible idea and probably escaped up to his rooms, and Sebastian—

—is somewhere, surely, but Carver doesn’t care so much because Anders has threaded their fingers together like he’d never had a doubt about his welcome, and the touch of his skin settles something wounded in Carver’s chest. Like a bristling cat who’s been stroked out of hissing, it coils up quiet and content.

Carver starts to say something but the touch of Anders’ other hand on his jaw stops him. “Did you forget I’m a healer, love?” Anders asks quietly, those eyes brimming up at him. “You’ve been hurting all night.”

“This isn’t a pain you can take away,” Carver snaps, and the words should sound harsh and brittle but there’s something  _warm_  under them, something that makes Anders’ eyes crinkle up in a tired smile.

_Maybe he can see past your storms too, Brother,_  Bethie whispers in his ear.

“Dunno. Haven’t you heard kisses are a pretty good cure for everything?” he asks and then he’s  _there,_  brushing their mouths together and Carver’s eyes start to burn for a different– well, a better reason, anyway. He doesn’t even care who sees, so long as he can sink into the quiet feeling of home of his mage.

Anders always tastes a little of lyrium— constant healing leaves him shivering on the edge of exhaustion, almost always, and Carver keeps sneaking him bottles of potion from the Gallows to dilute— and some sort of mint Carver doesn’t know the name for but has grown annoyingly fond of. 

Tonight, there’s also Hanged Man ale on his tongue and the burnt-sugar taste of the biscuits and Carver shivers, reaching up with a shaking hand to pull the ribbon out of his hair and card his hand through it, pulling him  _closer_. His lover is more than happy to follow the subtle guidance, and suddenly, as his mouth slants open under Carver’s, the bright noise of the pub in all its filth and familiarity fades away.

There’s only the sound of Anders’ breathing, of Carver’s heartbeat echoing in his ears, and the delighted laugh of a sister’s ghost that is suddenly, even if temporarily, easier to carry.

 


	12. Kiss Prompt 11: A Silly Kiss (Dorian/Lavellan/Iron Bull)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “See if I go back to bloody Halamshiral,” he grumps, stomping the last of the flames out with vicious precision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which dorian gets a cold after the ball at the winter palace, and the inquisitor's brother gives him a hard time

***

Prompt 11 - “We’re actually being kind of silly for once” kiss - slight ot3 hints

***

“I’m  _dying._ ”

His only answer is a soft, amused chuff from the chair next to his bed. Dorian cracks an eye open as his watcher for the hour shifts in his seat, the turning pages somehow loud enough in the quiet to be an admonishment.

“I’m  _dying_  and you don’t  _care_ ,” Dorian groans theatrically, throwing his arm back over his eyes. “Just  _leave_  me in peace to die.”

“Oh for–” Dorian hears the book snap closed, the way it thumps on the table next to his bed as his watcher leans closer with a waft of leather and rich bow-rosin. “Dorian, darling, you’re  _not_  dying.”

“Am.” He can’t stop the mumble– or from peeking from under his lashes to gauge the reaction. After all, it isn’t his fault that Isera had taken one look at him coughing his way down the stairs from the library and declared him unfit for duty. As if a Pavus could ever be unfit. 

(Since Isera went traipsing off without him, he has to take his entertainment where he can.)

(Really, it had only been  _one_  Horror. Barely a spring cold in Minrathous.) 

“You’re to watch over him, the both of you,” she’d told the two acting as nursemaids sternly. “And send me ravens daily.”

“Yes,  _mother,_ ” her brother had said, a good-natured sneer on his lips. Bull had just smiled and tipped his head with a soft-sounding, “Sure, Boss.”

“Okay,” Ethelan leans back with a creak, crossing one leg over his knee and Dorian  _knows_  that amused tone, has heard it for months in his sister’s voice whenever she thinks something is endearing and annoying in equal measure. He stops pretending he’s not watching when Ethelan laces his fingers over his knee and  _smiles_  at Dorian.

And oh, Dorian knows that smile, too. Usually it’s the last thing Venatori see before Isera falls on them with all of her terrible rage and glory. Though they share a similar face, Ethelan’s has an underlying  _amusement_  to his features, a sense of wild, almost-reckless cheer that could either be breathtaking or… well, breathtakingly frightening. 

Dorian feels a cold shiver run across his belly but he’s not sure if it’s fever or fear.

“Isera said this was a cold,” Ethelan’s voice is mild but Dorian can’t quite stop the cringe, or from pulling the covers up to his neck like a nervous Chantry sister despite the archer having not moved toward him. “Then again,” he all but purrs, “my sister, for all her talents, has never been a great healer.”

Dorian knows he should be defending his friend, and his Inquisitor, but every time he opens his mouth, Ethelan tilts his head and that smile goes just a little wider.

“Perhaps I should have that herbalist come look at you,” is the next thinly-veiled-and-overly-amused threat. “What  _was_  his name again? Adam? Adrin?” He pauses, frown almost convincing. “Adrift?”

“Adan?” Dorian croaks, wincing to himself when Ethelan claps his hands together, delight practically oozing from that sharp smile. He has nice hands, Dorian is dismayed to discover, thin and strong-looking, and sighs when he remembers Bull’s excited  _But he’s a redhead, kadan!_

“Yes,” Ethelan murmurs. “Rather dour fellow, but Isera assures me he’s the best.”

With a pleased-sounding, “No help for it, old boy. Can’t have you dying, up we get,” he cheerfully drags Dorian out of bed, wraps the coverlet around him, and all but frog-marches him out of the door down to the garden. Dorian shivers in the cool breeze, clutching his blanket and glaring holes into anyone foolish enough to stare.

 _I’ve changed my mind,_  he thinks waspishly, watching Ethelan skip off towards the other end of the garden to drag Adan away from his reading.  _I have no interest in him whatsoever. Isera can stop teasing_ –

“Hard day,  _kadan_?” Bull’s low, amused voice interrupts the increasingly-grumpy thoughts Dorian’s fuming over, and when Dorian looks up, he gets an eyeful of his lover’s chin. Warmth oozes through him like honey on toast as Bull wraps one big arm around his middle and gently pats his hair into some semblance of didn’t-just-roll-out-of-bed-while-ill.

Dorian starts to say, “You could say so,  _amatus_ ,” but the endearment is interrupted with another coughing fit; this one has the dull, dying plants perking up and turning to face him like bloody sunflowers. Bull laughs, warm and soft and too  _amused_ , especially when a sneeze causes a dark, goopy Horror to manifest at Dorian’s feet.

Ethelan lopes back to them, giving Bull a beaming smile and crouches down to poke at the Horror gently groaning at Dorian’s feet. Adan follows, eyeing the tiny spirit with distaste. “Master Pavus,” he says, and Dorian flinches back into Bull’s chest because that’s the exact tone Adan uses with Isera when she gets stubborn and, really, he  _doesn’t deserve this_ , “you assured me you knew how to brew a tincture of embrium.”

“I do!” Dorian squawks, partly out of irritation and partly because Bull is lifting him so the Horror could ooze under his feet safely. 

“And yet, your cold is still making arcane abominations erupt from the floor,” Adan replies, one eyebrow raised to the exact calculated height to make Dorian feel about five years old.

“Filthy  _Orlesians,_ ” Dorian snarls, or tries to. The next coughing fit sets the hem of his blanket blazing with brilliant purple flames, causing the Horror to ooze away as fast as a quasi-physical arcane spirit could; the rogue, damn his pretty hide, all but  _coos_  at the bloody thing. “See if I go back to bloody Halamshiral,” he grumps, stomping the last of the flames out with vicious precision.

Adan sighs, looking a bit older than he had a few minutes ago, and presses his blunt fingers against the bridge of his nose. “I will bring some draughts to your quarters,” he says, and there’s something bleak and annoyed in his voice as he turns away, book tucked under his arm, “if only you will  _go to them._ ”

Dorian’s protest of, “I  _was_  in them!” gets lost in another Horror-producing coughing fit; there are now three circling around him, and he isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry– he hasn’t lost so much control over his powers since he was eleven years old and fell asleep in a patch of stripweed, learning both that the great outdoors is  _horrifying_  and that he is shockingly allergic to it.

Ethelan grins up at him from playing some sort of peeking-through-his-hands game with the oldest Horror, the smug delight on his pointed little face infuriating and almost familiar enough to make Dorian feel slightly better. He has enough time to think about his best friend and her brother and grumble to himself  _They are definitely related_  before Ethelan pops up onto his feet and cups Dorian’s face, kissing him soundly on the mouth.

“There,” he coos, in the same tone of voice he used on the Horror (which appears to be oozing its slow way up the leg of his leathers). “Not dying anymore, are you?” And with a tweak of Dorian’s nose, the rogue slips away, talking gently to the tiny spirit about “let’s go see the Commander.”

Dorian stares, conflicted and wondering if he should warn Cullen, even as Bull laughs and presses his own kiss against Dorian’s neck. “Lucky,” he murmurs as he helps Dorian stagger back to his quarters, settling the singed covers around him. “Redhead kisses are the best.”


	13. Things Prompt: Said at 1am (Malcolm/Leandra)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How her hands sear him to the bone even through his best Circle robes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Things You Said at 1am
> 
> Title: Ink on Paper

#1 - Things You Said at 1am

***

Malcolm Hawke/Leandra Amell

***

“You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

Malcolm looks into his friend’s face and smiles, buckling his belt around his robes. “Maurevar, you worry too much.” He laughs, a bright, happy sound uncommon in the Gallows, but Malcolm’s wing of the dormitories often echoes with his booming laugh. Part defiance, part joy of life, and all honesty. “You look like you just sucked on a lemon.”

Ser Carver sighs and shakes his head, leaning on Malcolm’s staff. It still feels a little odd to trust a templar with his staff, but… theirs is an unlikely friendship, struck up in brief shift exchanges and late-night discussion that range from the bawdy to the philosophical. Malcolm is grateful: mages without allies or friends among the rank and file of their jailors often find themselves held to greater– and stricter– standards.

That he actually considers Carver a friend instead of just a tool helps.

“Just…” Carver sighs, leaning his forehead on the staff as he waits. “Try not to set anyone on fire, okay? The last thing we need is a reason for the new Knight-Lieutenant to look too closely at you.”

“Ah, Stannard,” Malcolm says, reaching for his staff. “She’s a litter of danger all on her own, isn’t she?” 

“Yes,” his friend answers gravely. A spark of warmth blooms in his heart when Carver hands it to him with no hesitation, despite the worry in his voice. “She is.”

The carved wood of his staff is warm and welcoming under his fingers, a host of sensations brought to mind by his mana reconnecting with his channel– the warmth of her hand in his, the moons hanging low and heavy in the sky, the magic of turning studied words into spells. The joy of each new letter in his hands, lightly perfumed and flourished with LA. 

And overlaying it all, a ringing sense of  _home._

 _I’ve missed you too, old friend,_  he thinks, following Carver into the hall with the other performers to brave the streets of Hightown.  _Let’s go make some mischief, hm?_

***

 _Maker,_  but he’s missed this. The city of Kirkwall laid bare at his feet, the sea breeze filtering through the buildings to brush sweet and cool over his face. Raucous cheers erupt from the party behind him, the door muffling the scattered applause and high-pitched shrieks of delight only a bit.

 _That’ll be Mharen, then_ , he thinks, trying to remember the order his fellow mages were performing. Mharen’s ice clouds had rolled through the crowd at the last ball too, freezing icicles onto beards and decorating ladies’ wigs with sparkling gems. If his memory is on, Scaff will be next with his living vines, and then it would be–

“Malcolm.”

The name is whispered from behind him, low and relieved, and when Malcolm turns, there she is, standing in the light of the door like Andraste’s own fire given life. She’s gone simpler in her dress this time, no less elegant– as if Leandra Amell could be anything but elegant– but wealth no longer seems to drip from her hem as she glides across the balcony to him, hands already outstretched. He wonders if her subtler dress is for him, or if being the belle of Kirkwall’s nobility has worn thin.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she murmurs, and then her arms are around him and the rosewater scent of her hair is filling his nose. “I’ve missed you.”

“And I, you,” he answers, raw truth scorching his throat. A handful of letters whetted the appetite, reaffirmed the affection, gave them truths to cleave to unhindered by Gallows walls and slavery under the Order, but ink on paper will never be the same as holding Leandra Amell in his arms like she belongs there. And oh,  _Maker,_  how she fits against him, how she leans into his chest and tucks her nose in the crook of his neck.

How her hands sear him to the bone even through his best Circle robes.

“Leandra,” he whispers, and then her face is turning to his and it is as natural as breath to kiss her, as natural as the sky is up, and the earth is down, and of  _course_  Malcolm Hawke is kissing Leandra Amell like they’re two halves of the same coin. What else can he do? The universe seems to shudder and sway, laughing at the thought of them being separate. Like the Maker himself is looking down and smiling as Leandra licks her way into Malcolm’s mouth beneath the moonlight and the joy of the late Hightown ball behind them.

Her lips are pink, kiss-swollen and missing their tinted balm when she pulls back. The clock tower across the way announces the shift in the night, a single  _bong_  ringing through the city, and his forehead rests against hers. Leandra’s hands snake into his black curls and when she whispers, “I love you,” Malcolm knows his heart is lost well and true. In this moment, he can refuse her nothing, would spill rash promises and all the might of his magic at her feet if it would please her.

If it would free the both of them, him from his prison of walls and her a prison of expectations.

And after he whispers it in return, a promise witnessed by the stars above and a templar friend keeping watch in the doorway, Malcolm walks to the temporary stage, staff already alight with multicolored flames and heart blazing Leandra Amell’s name.


	14. I love you Prompt 22: Through a Door (Cullen/Inquisitor)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild but likely AU spoilers for If You Ever Did Believe

The way you said “I love you” #22 - muffled, through a door

***

***

“Isera–”

“Go  _away._ ”

Cullen stifled another laugh in his fist, ribs aching as he tried to keep it quiet. Not well enough, apparently, from the sound of one of the Inquisitor’s boots hitting the closed door.

“I’m sure we can reverse the spell,” he managed, proud of himself for sounding reasonably even, considering his amusement is what landed him in this mess in the first place. “At least Dorian’s effects were worse.”

“Oh,  _thanks_  for that,” Isera replied acidly, and how well he could imagine the way her face was twisted up to achieve that level of venom. “Good to know that the leader of the Inquisition can embarrass herself but at least not as bad as  _Dorian._ ”

She had him there; Dorian’s violent, flame-shooting sneezes had nothing on the eye-searing purple his hair–  _all_  of it– had turned. Thankfully, and Cullen was almost shocked that he was grateful for their continued presence, the mages in the research tower had been able to put out the fires before it spread too far. A few books weren’t salvageable but, as at least one of them was Varric’s, Cullen felt it was no great loss after all.

As for his lady herself…

Well, it was fair to say that Cullen had to discipline some troops for laughing as their Inquisitor sprinted across the courtyard and fade-stepped almost all the way to her quarters. It was difficult, he’d learned, to speak sternly when he’d almost bruised a rib trying not to laugh himself.

“Really, darling,” he said, leaning back against the door. “It was only a  _small_  rift. And between Cole and Solas, they were able to calm the spirit you pulled through and dismiss it. No one was harmed.”

“Just my dignity,” she snarled, sounding much closer than she had before. “I bet Ethelan is having a bloody grand time, spreading embarrassing stories left and right.”

She had him there. Her brother, fine rogue and all that he was,  _was_  having a bit of fun at her expense, telling tales that rivaled some of Varric’s about their childhood. At last count, at least half the chairs in the Herald’s Rest were full and it wasn’t even midday.

“Has the sneezing stopped, at least?” Cullen asked, playing with the coin he’d carried for almost twenty years. Harritt had confirmed that the metal was too thin– worn from years of running his fingers over it, probably– to properly punch a hole in, but he’d assured Cullen that he’d be able to mount it to something before long. Hopefully in time for him to find an excuse for luring Isera to Ferelden. “If not, I can see if Adan has anything that might help. Or perhaps Fiona?”

The door rattled on its hinges as Isera leaned on it. If he knew his lady, and he’d like to think he did, she was moving past the stubborn pride that marked her and approached ‘willing to listen’ territory. “It’s stopped,” she muttered, sounding muffled. “For now.”

“Are you ready to open the door?”

“…no.”

“Are you going to forgive me any time soon?”

A pause. “No.”

Cullen waited a moment, feeling relaxed and almost lazy. The tide of the war had shifted: the Inquisition was no longer a fledgling struggling to fly, but now soared across the land, closing rifts and bringing the splintered remains of Thedas back under control. The Red Templars– and how he still shuddered to think of that fate– now fled when Inquisition forces showed up. Samson was safely in Skyhold’s prison, awaiting judgement.

Defeating Corypheus– a task that had once seemed far off and impossible– was now simply a matter of time. And Maker, did it feel  _good_.

“Don’t make me whine, Isera.”

“…don’t you  _dare_ ,” she hissed, and he could almost picture the narrowed eyes and furious color on her cheeks. “You know I  _hate_  it when you do that.”

Cullen grinned, tucking the coin back in his pocket. “But Isera,” he murmured, deliberately dropping his voice. “I  _love_  you.”

Sure enough, there was a thump– probably the back of Isera’s head hitting the door in exasperation– and then a click as the door swung open a moment later. Cullen stood and followed Isera into the Inquisitor’s quarters, smile growing wider with every step up the stairs. Finally, she stopped in front of the fireplace and faced him, narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion.

“You did that on purpose,” Isera accused, jabbing a finger into his chest. She half-resisted when he grabbed her hand and brushed a kiss across her palm but her voice warbled a bit when she spoke next. “You know that voice works.”

“Of course I did it on purpose,” Cullen agreed. “I wanted to see you.”

“Right, because I look  _great_ ,” she said crossly, turning away to pace the length of her carpet. The mass of kinked curls atop her head wobbled with every step, the wild, multi-colored streaks twisting throughout. While a startling change from the short cut she’d favored since Haven, it was still Isera. And it really hadn’t been her fault Tevinter component measurements were different than Fereldan; for that mess, Cullen was more than happy to place all the blame on Dorian’s shoulders, friend or no.

He caught up to her on her third circuit and wrapped her in his arms, grazing the tip of her ear with his lips. “You do,” he said, soft and low. “You always look beautiful.” At her derisive snort, he gently turned her and tipped her chin so that she could read his face.

Whatever she saw in his eyes made her bottom lip tremble and he ran his thumb across it, lingering on the scar that almost matched his.

“You  _are_  beautiful,” Cullen murmured before kissing her once, twice, a third time. When he pulled back, he felt a bit smug that the frown lines around her eyes and mouth had softened, and with every moment she spent in his arms, more tension bled from her. “Forgive me yet?”

Isera shook her head, a reluctant smile pulling at her lips. “Ass,” she said, affection warm in her voice. “What kind of future are we going to have if I can’t stay mad at you?”

“A good one,” Cullen whispered, stroking the tip of his nose down hers before kissing her again.


	15. Kiss Prompt 2: Painful Kiss (Cullen/Inquisitor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Planning a siege is much easier than watching one be executed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: Magic and Mercy

#2 - Painful Kiss - Cullen/Isera

***

Siege of Adamant - Parting Kiss

***

Planning a siege is much easier than watching one be executed.

The field is arguably about as perfect as human error can allow for– the trebuchets are lined up on ridges, positioned for mathematically surgical strikes. The bannermen stand proud and tall, heads held high as they sing words lost in the yelling and rumble of stones falling from ancient walls, but the tone, the pitch of that song– the  _hope_ , the  _promise_  of an army’s fury– washes over Warden and Inquisition alike. The soldiers march to it, strong, steady, feet falling like beats on a drum. 

 _We’re coming for you_ , the rhythm seems to say, a warning and dirge both.

And yet.

Cullen isn’t happy to be right about probable tactics. That there are archers on the walls as he’d expected, as he’d trained a contingent of shieldbearers for, isn’t boosting his morale. Warriors heft debris from the trebuchets, flinging down stone and mortar on his troops while the archers refill their quivers, and he should have expected that. Under Corypheus’ control or not, Wardens are some of the toughest soldiers around. This battle will be bloody after all, something he’d hoped to avoid too much of.

And more than that, each life lost to arrow or stone tightens an invisible string running the length of the Inquisitor’s back, her hands gripping her staff so tightly the knuckles are as pale and bloodless as her face.

He can see bits of her friends, her inner circle, in the way she faces the slaughter and raises her face into the oncoming storm: that steely gaze is Iron Bull’s, a defense against the loss of life. If they aren’t really people while the slaughter happens, it will be less to mourn later. The sparks dancing along her fingers are Dorian’s, as much flash and power as warning– and they thankfully no longer frighten him. The proud set of her shoulders– and likely the way her armor just so happens to match the small crystals embedded in her staff, and the silver glint of her hair– is all Madame de Fer, who could stare down a hurricane and give it a lecture on grace.

He wants to go to her, to wrap her in the shelter of his arms and let her grieve for their soldiers, the way she’d grieved for Haven, for Crestwood, for the ruins of her people’s homeland in the south of Orlais. He knows, though, he can’t– at the moment, she is The Inquisitor, the face of hope for Thedas, the bane of Corypheus’ plans. It is the role the soldiers require her to play, the bearer of hope and justice in this bloody war, and it is she they look to for inspiration.

Being Isera Lavellan will have to wait until The Inquisitor’s work is done.

But there is only so much bloodshed she can take, Isera or Inquisitor, and with a glance at Dorian, she gives an order that is no less sharp for being unspoken. As one– mirrors of the other, Tevinter and Dalish, necromancer and rift mage, educated and piecemeal– they raise their hands and there is a rush of wind, a spark of blue, and the next arrow bounces off of a barrier that wasn’t there two seconds ago. It takes twice the effort to kill a soldier now, and the spell buys them enough time to get the ram into position without anyone else falling.

 _Maker’s mercy,_  he thinks, awe and love and a twinge of fear twining through his heart.  _They shielded the_ entire _army. How long did they practice that?_

It is so like her, though, that he has to smile even as he commands their forces forward. Even under the mantle she wears into battle like a shield, under the twin bruises of practicality and responsibility on her heart, Isera would save who she can, when she can. He’d teased her as much, once, when one of their strolls on the battlements had ended in philosophical debate rather than the kiss he’d expected.  _Magic and mercy,_  he’d told her, and she’d smiled and shrugged until he caught her gaze and repeated it.

_Magic and mercy._

The boom of the ram and the splintering of the wood is music in his ears as the troops surge in a wave, clearing a path for his lady, for the woman whose footsteps shake the very earth beneath them with her unasked-for power. She ducks under the ram, through the splinters, neither frightened nor hurried, and he has to admire the way she tries to hold so tight to that mask in the face of wanton destruction.

“You have your way in,” he tells her, and oh, the flash of pain in her eyes as she looks past him to their fallen. “Best make use of it. We’ll hold off the main host of demons as long as we can.”

“I’ll be fine,” she replies, and he wants to believe her. He  _has_  to believe her. She has faced worse than this; trial by fire and blood have been her sword and shield since Haven, or before, and it is the lover rather than the Commander that fears for her. “Keep my men safe,” is her next order, and he can hear the plea behind it because he’s looking for it.

_Don’t let anyone else die for me._

_Don’t get yourself killed._

“We’ll do what we have to, Inquisitor,” he reminds her and has to keep himself from flinching as her face shutters.

And then, as a soldier is dropped from the ramparts, as she turns to face yet another horde of enemies looking to tear the only bright thing from their lives apart, he can’t quite stop himself from reaching out and snagging her hand. A protest dies on her lips and for a moment– a bare instance in time– he sees Isera shining out of the Inquisitor’s eyes.

And he doesn’t care who sees, then. 

He doesn’t care if it’s the soldiers, or the demons, or Hawke or Stroud or the Maker Himself. It’s not as if they’re a secret anymore, if they ever had been, and it’s not as if the Wardens and demons will try to kill her any less if they know there’s someone who loves her, needs her, worships her in a very different and non-Chantry-approved way. But the Maker take him to the twisting Beyond if he’s going to let his lady walk into probable death without giving her something to take with her.

It takes so little effort to reel her closer, to tilt her chin and brush his lips across hers, to feel her sigh against his mouth and invite him deeper. The song of war fades ever so around them as the taste of her surrounds him, makes his senses swim. They’ve shared many kisses, the Commander and the Inquisitor– kisses in joy, in sorrow, in fire and flame and loss. Unspoken messages float between them–  _I love you, I need you, stay safe, please–_  licked into her mouth as though by the doing, she can carry some piece of him with her like a shield.

This kiss, though– this kiss  _hurts_. Not physically, not like when he’d kissed her in Samson’s lair, with red lyrium in her blood and her blood on his hands. And not quite like when he’d first kissed her, when he’d thought her lost to an avalanche even the bravest chevalier might have balked at facing.

No, this kiss hurts deep in his heart.

He is sending her to war again, to shed blood she’ll weep over later, and she goes out of duty and a bone-deep need to see this to the end. For an instant, Cullen hates this, hates everything that keeps him from saving her from the scars this will put on her soul. He hates Empress Celene, and the effort they’re putting into saving her, he hates the Wardens for their weakness, he hates Corypheus for everything he’s done. 

But most of all, he hates that he can’t be at her side, can’t protect her– as if she’d need it anyway.

He feels the moment the Inquisitor returns, feels her pull away and seal herself off long before her mouth parts from his, and there is the briefest whisper-confession-promise of love against his ear before she’s off, storming across the sand to lay her own siege against the enemy, and he is left, heart quaking, before he retreats back into being the Commander.

The barked order and sching of his sword as he pulls it from his scabbard is enough to lay a thin layer of calm on his nerves, and the way his heart thrums Isera’s name with every beat is a prayer more holy than the Chant itself.

***

When the battle is finished, when there is no blood-spattered warrior goddess waiting for him, when he gets the report that she’s opened a Fade rift and fallen in– Cullen takes one deep breath, clutching tight the memory of that kiss, however painful, and the promise of her love.

He raises his face to the cool night wind, letting it dry his eyes, before turning to Rylen and organizing a return to Griffon Wing Keep. There they will tend their wounded, send their dead to the Maker on pyres of wood and sorrow and fragrant herbs– and he will wait for his heart to return.


	16. Affection Prompt 23: Seeking Shelter (Isabela/Merrill)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is a romance spun only in their thoughts, this idea of tame waters whispering poetry to the sand.
> 
> Isabela knows better.

Affection prompt 23 - seeking shelter

***

Isabela

***

Those who stand on the shore and watch the waves roll in think they know the sea. To them, the tides are even, and calm, steady as the moon and sun. The sea is something to admire, to dip their toes in while they count the colors splashing through the waves like stained glass. And then they go home, and sleep in their beds, and forget it exists until the morning. It is a romance spun only in their thoughts, this idea of tame waters whispering poetry to the sand.

Isabela knows better.

Without respect, the sea chews up honorable men and scoundrels alike, clasps their bones to its watery heart like prizes hard-won, like forgotten legends and half-remembered lives. The only poetry the water knows is brutality, waves white-crested with rage, rogue swells, maelstroms that take ship and life with nary a trace left on the horizon. Even with respect, the sea is still a wild,  _breathing_  thing, alive with moods, with temper, a character all its own. Water never apologizes for its wrath.

Issuing a challenge to the sea and throwing yourself against the waves time and again, wrestling the ancient and divine to see who comes out on top— it’s what Isabela lives for. Never does she feel so powerful as when she dares the storms to strike her down, rain-soaked cold, grinning through a mouthful of salt with her stomach in her throat. Until you’ve stood at the prow of a ship, with sea-mist kissing your face, with naught in your hands but damp rope and a looking glass, you haven’t really lived. She knows the call of freedom— the faint song of her crew, almost drowned in the roar of the untamable.

And Isabela has always chased freedom.

Feeling the sigh of a lover against your neck, hands sliding south and parting thighs, a sated afterglow— these things are part of the fun, a reward for deeds both good and bad. But ultimately, they’re short-lived and skin-deep— they do nothing to fill the constant, boundless ache in the heart of a pirate. Flesh is a fleeting seduction, a familiar tavern song that has nothing on the psalm of the sea. Until the cool ocean breeze slides its fingers through your hair and caresses your sun-warm skin, until the siren song of the waves coils around your heart and claims you for its own, you’ve never made love.

How  _beautiful_  is the sea, sparkling with light, with life; how in love with the sea you can fall. And oh, how it  _loves_  in return.

“Have you ever been on the open ocean during a storm?” Isabela asks Hawke one night, two glasses of Corff’s honey whiskey burning her throat and a third sliding down to her. Merrill is drowsing on the bar, already sailing toward a hangover, and Hawke leans next to her, face resting on a fist with freshly-bloodied knuckles. “Best feeling in the world.”

“My open ocean experience,” Hawke replies dryly, a twinkle in her eye and a smirk curving her lips, “was less than satisfactory. Yes, there  _was_  a storm, in fact, and I didn’t feel all that free.”

Merrill tries to say something, voice thick with drink and sleep alike, but neither of them can understand her. After a moment of silence, her eyes finally open. “Weren’t you sick?” The question is a little slurred, and Isabela can’t quite help the smile when the little mage struggles to sit up. “I was  _so_  sick coming to the Free Marches.”

“Were you in the hold?” Hawke asks, reaching out to brush some hair from Merrill’s face. “I was in the hold with Carver and that’s enough to make  _anyone_  sick.”

At Merrill’s nod, Isabela runs her own fingers through Merrill’s hair, tweaking a lock back into place. “There’s your problem, kitten,” she says, matter-of-factly. “You need to be up on the deck, under the sky. Nothing between you and the horizon kissing the stars.”

“That does sound much better,” Merrill mumbles, pitching forward and settling her forehead into the crook of Isabela’s neck, words fading lazily into one another. “Maybe I could like sailing then.”

“Ah, kitten, being a refugee is nothing like owning your journey,” Isabela sighs, some almost-forgotten part of her heart twisting; she was once a refugee of sorts, too. Her palm cradles the back of Merrill’s neck, a half-smile on her lips as the little elf’s breathing slows into sleep, nuzzles until she’s comfortable.

Hawke catches her eye and gives her one of those unbearably tender smiles, the ones she usually reserves for Varric, Fenris, or Carver— when the idiot in question isn’t looking. It softens her, smoothing those sharp Amell features into something almost  _kind_.

“You, too, Hawke,” ‘Bela says, proud that there’s only a slight hitch to her breathing as Merrill shifts against her, almost purring, “When you decide you’re done playing hero, we’ll strap a blade on that hip and turn you into a raider yet.”

***

Once upon a time, and don’t most sailor stories start that way? Once, Isabela had looked at Hawke without seeing her. Oh, she’d seen the moods and the smile sharp as a dagger, those sinner’s lips smeared with paint and blood in equal measures. When Hawke turned to her in a brawl, blood streaked down that pointed little chin and blue eyes flashing in delight, in danger, something in Isabela had stirred, stretched out long and lazy, like a cat in a sunbeam.

The whisper of something kindred, of something beautiful and deadly, twined through Isabela’s heart, and she was reminded of the first time she saw the sea. Not the Chantry-glass picturesque beaches, but the sea whipped into froth, roaring with the promise of destruction. Fighting beside Hawke— hell, fighting  _with_  Hawke, too, for that matter— was like dancing her prow between those wild waves, like riding the edge of a storm that made her breath catch and a thrill flood her heart.

So much power contained in that deceptively-lean body, in the rhythm of staff meeting floor meeting enemy and for a time, it’s a harmony to the call of home.

But the more time Isabela spends with Hawke, the years that have passed, the more she sees past that scrapper’s face— and to the bleeding heart behind it. 

Hawke… Hawke  _cares._  The beggars and the downtrod collect around Hawke’s feet and that mouth that could be so cruel, so cold and sharp and beautiful, softens and she promises them the justice or vengeance Kirkwall has denied them. And with every vow, she drifts a little further away from Bela’s grasp.

“You’ve never met a lost cause you didn’t love, have you?” Isabela asks, a small bottle with a smaller ship sitting between them. It doesn’t have the sails of the Siren, the ass end is too wide to be a pirate’s vessel, and the figurehead is disappointedly chaste instead of the bared bust mark and crew alike had loved, but it’s still a ship. Hawke gave it to her months ago, and still, she loves it as much as she did on first sight.

Bela’s tempted to raise the bottle to her ear and see if the water sings the same. It doesn’t, she knows, but  _fuck_  if she doesn’t miss the sea with a hollow ache so deep, it might as well be an abyss.

“Nope,” Hawke replies cheerfully, ale foaming in her glass as cries of  _Champion_  and  _Amell_  and  _Hawke_  ripple around them. “Too stubborn and too Fereldan by half to give up.”

Quiet falls between them as Isabela nurses a rum so awful, even she can’t down it in a gulp, and Hawke drinks down the ale with intent. In a way, they’re both trying to drown bitter memories: Fenris hasn’t been by in too many weeks, not since a mage with more heart than common sense took down an Arishok twice her size, and Anders sulks in his sewer clinic, happy to play the wounded party since Hawke still won’t give him the time of day beyond a heartfelt thanks for his healing.

“Does it ever stop hurting?” Hawke surprises Isabela with the question. They both know she isn’t referring to the shiny new scar running up her sternum, or the aches that must still happen even with a mage knitting bone and lung back together. For a moment, she’s tempted to laugh, to lie, to reassure— something that only happens with Hawke and with Merrill— but eventually, she shakes her head and sips on her shit rum.

“No,” is as honest an answer as she’s ever given and Hawke winces, cheer sliding from her face as quick as Corff’s ale goes flat.

While Isabela is swamped with too many memories of golden skin and Crow tattoos and days of sailing wild and free and not quite in love but not quite not, thin, pale arms wrap around her shoulders and squeeze. The greeting is in elvhen, but the affection is warm and true and, even after a few years, puts a stutter in the jaunty pace of her heart. Merrill always smells like fresh splintered wood and coppery blood and something sweet, like the tea cakes she’s finally perfected. And if Hawke is a walking contradiction, Isabela thinks, closing her hands over Merrill’s, then she and Merrill are two of a kind.

***

_You’re a Champion, now._

Isabela’s words, spoken in irritation and some emotional firestorm she’d tried to keep off her face, were as true today as they were two years ago.

_I’m just a lying, thieving snake._

Castillon’s ship—  _her_  ship— bobs gently on the wharf, sails lowered against the brisk breeze capping the small waves with foam. It calls to her in a way she’s just proud enough to admit to, but not proud enough to tell anyone else. Hawke has a whole city rallying around her now, using her name and face to whip the masses into a frenzy. The war hovering over Kirkwall like a headsman’s axe for the last decade or two will break out eventually. Soon. Sooner still if Anders doesn’t get a grip on that demon in his head.

Not today, though.

Today, it’s just Hawke and Isabela and the path to freedom singing on the edges of her senses. And damn, but she hates being pulled in too many directions. Ahead of her is everything she’s always wanted, a home made from pitched boards and rigging and sails. The only real home she’s known, home because  _she_  chose it. Not Luis, not Zevran, not the Warden. Not Hawke. Just her, the always-ahead horizon, and the promise of the sea’s constant, ever-changing love.

And yet, behind her is Hawke, head pillowed on laced hands, smiling up at the rumbling gray sky as carefree as she always is. Without an audience to perform for, an enemy to bring out the savagery, her face is almost smooth. Lines have formed here and there, the toll Kirkwall has carved into her features, but in many ways, it’s still the face of the Fereldan refugee who clawed her way to infamy and notoriety only to snub the nobles clamoring for her hand. Idly, ‘Bela wonders if either Hawke or Fenris know just how many assassins and offended nobles she and Varric have turned away from the Amell estate.

“Storm’s brewing,” Isabela says, tempted to slap her hand over her mouth before she says anything else stupid and obvious. At least there actually is a storm brewing overhead, that bitter, barbed guarantee of cold wind and colder rain; she can play it off if—

“Yup,” comes the answer, around the stalk of the weed Hawke had pulled from the concrete. Even listening for it, Isabela can’t hear any overt concern or… anything, really.

‘Bela reluctantly pulls her feet from the tide, tucking them under her as she faces Hawke. “Aren’t you worried?” she asks, wrestling with the leash that eight years has looped around her. “City’s a powderkeg.” She forces a laugh and adds, with a nonchalant flip of her hair, “and Anders is the fuse.”

“Do I worry about anything?” Hawke grins at the sky, finally opening one eye and pulling the stalk from between her teeth, contemplating the chewn end of it with furrowed brows. “It’ll be what it is. Too much to hope it’ll simmer down now. And anything I do— supporting mages or supporting Templars— is going to be the spark that sets this entire city on fire.” She sits up and brushes the Lowtown dust from her shirt before standing, giving her another of those soft smiles that are so common these days. “I just try to find shelter where I can, ‘Bela. Day by day.”

The advice is eerily similar to what Zevran had told her the morning he left.  _Take your pleasures where you can, mi amor,_  he’d whispered into her hair.  _Enjoy life when it is good. Expecting anything more is reckless._

For about five minutes, she’d stared after him as he’d blended into the crowd on the docks, wondering if she wanted to be reckless for a change. She  _could_. Most would call her profession reckless, but anyone who knew Isabela— and very few could make that claim without lying or delusion— knew better. Chasing riches and freedom, weathering storms tangled in rigging, none of that was reckless. Reckless was staying in one city for eight years. It was getting too close to a hero, waiting for the sword to fall and take someone else from her.

Reckless was letting her heart dangle like bait from a hook, entirely too wrapped up in  _people_.

Hawke flashes her another smile and ambles off to find Fenris, too stubborn to conform to the Marcher culture around her, too Fereldan to not stick out. The first drops of rain splash down heavy and stinging, colder than summer rain has any right to be. Isabela watches as people scatter, ducking into alcoves and under door awnings, huddling together. Part of her wants to label them poor, sorry sods and not have to worry about them anymore.

The rest of her thinks it’s only sensible to seek shelter from the storm. Just like it would only be sensible for her to drag Hawke and the ragtag, unlikely group of heathens she’d collected like a packrat and flee the Free Marches entirely. Let Kirkwall burn when it blew, so long as she and hers were safe.

“Thinking long thoughts?”

“Always, kitten,” Isabela says, slapping on a smile as Merrill sits down next to her. There’s a basket on her arm, and a daisy tucked in her hair— she’s probably been to see Varric, then— and Isabela is so busy studying her face, she misses the little elf unfastening her leggings and plopping her feet into the water with a small laugh. “Don’t go falling off again,” she warns, some of the pressure easing off her heart.

Merrill is like that— it’s hard to feel sad when she shines that smile at you, like she trails noise and cheer behind her. Varric calls her Daisy, Hawke calls her Sunshine, and even Sebastian can’t keep a glower on that pinched, royal face when Merrill’s giggling and adorable and a little bit devilish. The only person she’s seen able to resist Merrill’s charm is Fenris, and after eight years, even his weighty brooding is lighter when she’s around, whether he’ll admit it or not.

“I won’t,” Merrill says, splashing the side of the bay wall. Then she turns those big green eyes on Isabela, a question neither of them have asked or answered lingering in the space between them. “Will you take me sailing some day, Isabela?”

Isabela cocks her head, one brow climbing toward her hair. “I thought you didn’t like sailing, kitten.”

A flush crawls up Merrill’s tattooed cheeks, turning her pale skin pink and glowing. It’s a good look on her, ‘Bela notices; it suits the delicate heart shape of her face and makes her look… sweet. Well, Merrill always looks sweet, somehow, even covered with blood and demon gore, but the blush is sort of like whipped cream on a dessert.

Merrill is another mystery, in some ways. If Hawke isn’t what she appears, that wiry strength hiding a soft heart, then neither is Merrill. She’s grown her hair out a bit, braided it so that it hangs over her shoulder, and the face has grown stronger, a little harder for her years in the alienage, but if anyone had told Isabela eight years ago that the tiny woman sitting next to her, gaily splashing her feet in the Waking Sea despite the pouring rain, was as much a predator as Hawke, as Fenris or Carver or Isabela herself… well, she wouldn’t have believed it.

In the world out there on the sea, the one Chantry mothers whisper prayers to themselves about and romantics like Varric pretty up to tell stories of, what you see is what you get. Every woman has at least one dagger in her boot, every man has a debt, and everyone, down in their souls, is looking for something to fill the hole in their hearts. As long as you know that, you can survive any pirate dive until dawn.

Here on land, it’s a different story. Those who look like storybook heroes and wear shining armor— literally— can be as much villain as the child-eating hag of fairy tales. Those who look like fighters can be as gentle as a kitten until provoked. And those who look like kittens can be the baddest of the bad.

There’s a hint of a challenge in Merrill’s voice when she tilts her head and says, “Maybe I could learn to like it.”

Isabela tries to picture swaggering into one of her old haunts with a woman like Merrill on her arm. If they were lucky, the worst of the catcalls and jeers would be upfront, something Isabela could cut through with a dagger or a sharp glance and a reminder of debts. If they weren’t so lucky, someone might try to handle Merrill right off of ‘Bela’s arm.

And wouldn’t that be fun to watch, she thinks with a fierce grin. Merrill would have the fucker screaming and pleading for their pitiful little life, smiling that bemused little smile while her eyes flashed with a darker delight than she ever let Hawke see.

“You know,” Isabela murmurs, leaning closer. Under the smell of rain, she can smell copper and splintered wood, and for the first time since she realized Hawke wasn’t the shelter she thought, a hope of safe harbor floats to the top of her mind. “You just might, kitten.”

Merrill looks up, then, raindrops clinging to those long, dark lashes. And the sunny smile beaming across her face is enough to make even the dreary, gray Kirkwall rain warm. Neither of them is bothered by the storm, and that, Isabela thinks, as she brushes a kiss across Merrill’s lips, is a very good sign indeed.


	17. Affection Prompt 28: Teaching Something New - Carver/Anders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. Only one thing for that, then.
> 
> “Get up here,” Carver says, and it comes out sounding somewhere between a demand and a request

28 – canders – teaching the other something new

***

***

“What do you  _mean_  you’ve never made cheese pie?”

Carver can’t stop himself from asking. He knows he sounds insulted, perhaps even insult _ing_ , but Anders just blinks at him before laughing. It sounds bright, but Carver is well-versed in Anders-ese these days— three years of being less-than-secret lovers has left him  _fluent_  in Anders’ moods. Much like his blood carries the darkspawn taint from his Warden days, this laugh is lightness layered over pain.

“Well,” Anders drawls, lacing his fingers behind his head and  _lounging_  in a way only a feline has a right to, “the Circle didn’t exactly trust me in the kitchens, and the Warden-Commander had a full staff for the Arling or an open campfire, so.” 

“Still.” Carver bangs an iron skillet down on the stove, muttering under his breath. 

Happy, sunlit memories dance in his head, bright spots in the mess the Hawke family’s lives had become—Bethany’s laughter when she smelled the crust in the oven, Marian always trying to stick her fingers in it before it was cool and complaining about the barely-red burn. His mother’s hands over his, showing him how to mix the dough, what to look for. His father’s smiles, warm like the leftover pie, content the way he had been only when they were all around and well-fed. “I can’t believe you’ve never— it’s a traditional— have you even  _had_  it?”

“Mm.” Anders tilts back on the chair, quickly setting the feet back down with a grimace when it wobbles. “Can’t say as I have.”

Carver sighs. Even here in Kirkwall, away from Circle imprisonment, away from the Wardens—so long as that Stroud keeps his investigation out of the city—Anders has so little joy. Duty he has in abundance, piety of a kind, and more angst than half the young apprentices Carver lets wail on his shoulder about this crush or that argument. But joy doesn’t seem to be a talent for his troubled mage.

Well. Only one thing for that, then.

“Get up here,” Carver says, and it comes out sounding somewhere between a demand and a request. Anders grins at him, relaxed and lazy despite the ever-present bags under his eyes, before he realizes Carver’s serious. “ _Now_ , mage.”

***

Despite the space, it’s somehow cozy to have Anders at his elbow as he opens the containers of flour and meal—thank the Maker for Marian’s listening to Orana’s timid suggestions for the kitchen or it might’ve gone rancid. Carver directs him to the larder for ingredients, busy measuring—and laughs when he comes back without the milk delivered yesterday.

“No, Anders,” he says, amused and annoyed in equal measures, “have you ever actually cooked before?”

“Bite me,” Anders snarls, a flush riding high on his cheeks. Carver shrugs and grabs his lover’s arm, nipping at his wrist before Anders pulls away, growling something under his breath about Templars and orders. It’s easy enough to ignore him. Waking up early to steal a few hours together before Carver is missed at the Gallows always leaves Anders in a foul mood until there’s coffee or kisses or both.

Usually both.

And it’s always best, Carver thinks to himself with a grin, to rile Anders up every now and again. There’s a temper hiding somewhere under his sometimes-relaxed facade, but– like any feline Carver wants to piss off– all it takes is stroking his fur the wrong way, usually by hinting that there’s something,  _anything_ , he can’t do. Then there's a spark, a fire, sometimes an explosion, and fighting with Anders is unlike fighting with anyone else. (After all, he doesn't wind up in bed with anyone else after an argument. Not that he's complaining.)

Anders watches warily as Carver shows him how to mix the butter into the meal with his fingertips. “Of course,” Carver says, feeling only a twinge of bitterness hastily shoved aside; he’s had over two decades to get used to not being a mage, after all, “keeping the butter cold will be easier for someone with frost fingers.”

“Look who’s talking,” Anders grumbles. “Your feet are  _freezing_  at night.”

Carver just grins at him as he pours a splash of milk into the bowl—“Goat is best, but druffalo or sheep will work, too.”—and watches as Anders hesitantly cracks an egg into the bowl.

“Do you use a,” Anders gestures at the bowl vaguely, “a spoon or something?”

“Spoon, he says.” Carver laughs and digs into the sticky mess with his hands, enjoying the feel of the dough forming and squishing between his fingers. Bethany—and funny how well he can recall this, but his twin had always squealed when Mother had them help on bread days. She’d jump and yelp and pull her hands out as fast as she could, making her dough always lumpy and uneven. He and Marian had teased her every time, too, until she got big enough to scorch a fist-size hole in one of his shirts when she punched his arm.

Maker, but he misses her.

“…Carver?” Anders is looking at him, that pinched, concerned look he gets whenever Carver starts brooding.

“Just thinking.” Carver swallows, hard, look at the dough clinging to his hands with misty eyes. All these years and he’s never had a proper cry over losing her. Never enough time to break down. Marian always says that picking up the pieces of yourself takes twice as long as breaking down does, and there just hasn’t been enough time. It’s always one disaster after another. But maybe… maybe here, he can dip a toe into his pool of memories.

It quickly becomes a flood, now that he’s relinquished a little control.

And so he finds himself telling Anders about Bethany. Her sunny smiles and mischievous streak, and the time she dumped a bucket of winter-cold water on his head and made him walk home. Childhood stories take up the time between the dough resting as he caramelizes onions and slices tomatoes and somehow cons Anders into crumbling up some cheese, only sputtering in laughter when, “You nailed her braid to the bed? Maker, Carver!” Early adulthood stories spill from his lips as he forms the tart in the skillet, layers the onions and cheese and tomatoes and brushes butter along the folded crust.

But something in his voice must change when he puts the tart in the oven to bake, because Anders face pinches again, and his hands seek out Carver’s now-clean ones. The expression on his lover’s face tells him that he doesn’t have to talk anymore, that he can avoid the pain lurking like a specter on the long, dusty road from Lothering.

But he can’t, can he? Not really.

He’s been running from it for years.

“She was always—brave. Braver than I gave her credit for,” Carver says, wiping at his face, surprised to find tears. He can’t remember the last time he cried—certainly not since he was a child. He can’t wipe them away fast enough, because Anders sees them and pulls Carver against his shoulder, arms wrapped tight around him as if he can keep Carver from shaking apart by sheer willpower. 

“She loved you,” Anders says, voice gone suspiciously hoarse and muffled against Carver’s curls. “And I’ve noticed you Hawkes have a tendency to find trouble no matter where you are.”

Carver splutters on a laugh, a sad, wet-sounding thing that doesn’t ring at all of a twenty-four year old Templar Knight. It sounds more like the nineteen year old who’d watched his sister, his  _twin_ , die for him, like the twelve year old pushing her into the mud and teasing her about Lothering boys, and the seven year old carefully hefting his father’s hammer and a single, long nail centered in a braid.

Maker, he and Marian haven’t even  _talked_  about her.

(But they sometimes end up yelling at each other with her name hanging between them like a swear, a dirty word, a ghost pleading for them to stop.)

Talking about her like this feels… good, in a way. Like a wound washed clean—and Carver has had more than a few of those, these past years. It stings but should heal well enough. He shrugs out of Anders’ grasp and takes the tart out of the oven, the rich, buttery smell filling the kitchen and sweeping away some of the heavy grief in his heart.

“She loved these,” he says softly, checking the hot crust with a quick-by-experience fingertip. “But she hated making them. So I learned to do it from mum, and every Wintersend, the smell of onions and butter and cheese would fill up our tiny cottage.”

Anders says nothing as they retire to the sitting room, plates in one hand and ale in the other, but the soft sound of his enjoyment at the first bite is enough to make Carver feel warm again. Kirkwall is a bit of a shit city, all things considered—Hightown is too full of itself, the winter decorations almost garish in their display. Lowtown, meanwhile, still stinks like the Bay, but at least the decorations there are honest in their simplicity. It somehow makes Carver feel more at home, and he’d insisted that they decorate in that style instead of what Hightown expected.

But, shit city or not, it’s Wintersend, and there’s the taste of a home long since slipped through his fingers and the comfort of someone who loves him curling up at his side. He’ll even be able to tolerate the cat Anders has snuck into the house, since it licks his fingers and doesn’t shit in his boots.

_Maybe this is home, now_ , he thinks, and looks down into a lazy, content kiss that soothes the ragged edges of his heart.

***

The next time he manages to come back to the estate, with maleficar blood sizzling on his armor and a dark, bile-like bitter taste in his mouth, he can hear Marian clattering around, calling something out to Anders—and the warm scent of butter and onions surrounds him as he steps in from the snow.

He sees Marian poke her head out, flash him a startled-but-genuine smile, and all but fling herself at him. The force she hits his armor with has to be bruising, but her laugh is real enough, as is his undignified, “Oof!” Anders leans against the door to the kitchen, something nervous and shyly pleased playing around his mouth, and when Carver steps through—Marian still clinging to his shoulders— to claim a kiss, he sees it on the stove.

It’s not perfect. And yet, it  _is_. The crust has been hastily crimped, uneven, and one side is a little burnt. (Okay, a  _lot_  burnt.) And it looks like the tomatoes he’d picked were almost still green, and winter-thin even from here. But the smell is right, and there’s an ale and a plate waiting for him, almost like—

“You knew I was coming?” he asks Marian, not at all surprised when that wicked Hawke smirk curves her lips.

“Varric and I bribed Athenril to keep an eye out for you and send one of her boys to tell us.”

Warmed through and through, not just by the gesture—Marian likes pretending she’s subtle and sneaky, despite everyone else in Kirkwall knowing the truth—but by the surprise waiting for him, he pulls his mage against him, trapping Marian between them with a laughing squeal. He kisses Anders again, deeper, trying to somehow put emotion into movement. The knot in his chest is too dense, too hot and raw, to untangle just yet. He’ll save that for when they’re alone, tangled together in bed.

For now, it’s enough to taste onion and ale and Anders and know that somehow, in this blasted city with this blighted snow that looks nothing like the Fereldan village of his childhood, he’s found a home.

 


	18. I Love You Prompt 13: Said in a Letter (Shakarian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last message still flickers on the abandoned screen when the artificial morning comes and Erash and Mierin come to relieve him from watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sort of "lost moment" from my very first shakarian fic, "right here, with me." (It's hard to believe it's only been a year since I wrote it oO; )

13 for Shakarian – **“I Love You” in a letter**

***  
***

Silence doesn’t bode well.

Omega is never silent: the wails and sirens echo through the streets and alleys, washing over everything, tinting it all with a glow of desperation and depravity. Omega is, in fact, a symphony of crime, a cacophony of bodies hitting pavement, rebar cracking bone, guns discharging in every quarter of the small asteroid. And at the head of it, in the depths of the orchestral pit, stands Aria T’Loak and her never-ending grasp on Omega’s denizens.

Silence on Omega is reserved for the dead or the murderous. And there are days, such as they are, that Garrus wishes he was among the former rather than the latter.

He knows about survival. Too much about it, if he’s honest with himself.

It’s been months since he ran to Omega, seeking—even if he didn’t know it at the time—a messy end to a life of failures. Failed cop. Failed Turian. Failed ally.

If only, he thinks to himself. If only he’d been there, if only he’d had her back. Could they have saved more lives? If he hadn’t run back to the unloving arms of C-Sec, to the fantasy of being a Spectre, could he have saved her?

It’s an insidious word, _if_. Such a small sound, so full of possibility— and yet, how large is if when it haunts his every step, ghosts his every shot, keeps pace with him in the fitful, snatched hours of sleep when he’s exhausted enough to think about her. In the synthetic darkness that is as close to dawn as Omega gets, if rings through his exhaustion, scrabbling to find well-worn chinks in the armor of his mind.

But Shepard is just another ghost, larger than the ifs that hound him and just as ephemeral. Just as insubstantial.

He’d failed her, too. He knows it, even if—he laughs bitterly to himself—none of the Normandy’s former crew is honest enough to tell him. He can’t stop himself from thinking about her, so here in the dark, with two unopened messages blinking gently in his visor, he lays back and lets the memories come.

And like the assault Omega greets its victims with, they crash over him in a wave that takes his breath away. The way she’d looked, curled up next to him like she belonged. The thin sheets he’d preferred draped her in regality reserved for paragons, for deities, clinging to just enough to suggest without telling. How peaceful she looks in his memory, bathed in the low light of his residential ward, how it smooths blurring fingers over the fine lines he can trace from memory. In sleep’s loving embrace, Shepard looks like someone soft, an unscarred soul spared from the cruelty of the galaxy.

It’s a lie, he knows, an illusive web strung with half-denied dreams and fear of rejection hiding behind duty. Shepard had had steel in her spine, fire fierce enough to make stars go dark with envy, and a kind heart she’d armored in brutal practicality. “Lessons learned,” she’d said one night, shivering in the frozen wind of Noveria, eyes haunted by past mistakes— he’d learned fast enough that the scars on her skin were a mere shadow of the ones borne on her heart. The only time she’s soft in his memory is that night in his apartment, when the mask of Commander Shepard had shattered at his threshold and he’d seen behind it to the woman glimpsed in far-flung moments of vulnerability.

He can almost hear Shepard’s ghost whispering that if he’s going to break apart, the time is now—the squad will be up soon, bringing with them the clash and bluster and scent of tea and coffee that so often heralds the hour they’d claimed as a dawn. Hours slipped through his talons, drifting into the fraying shelter of that one stolen night, and there’s so little time left this night. He’s been putting off reading the messages since he’d seen the senders, but part of him knows Shepard would be disappointed in him for being a coward.

So with a sigh—and an angry-wistful glance at the distant rock over his head, wishing there were stars or, well, anything but the pollution-haze of Omega—he transfers the files to his cracked datapad and opens them.

The first, he’s unsurprised to see, is the official Killed in Action report from Anderson. Despite the sorrow palpable through the omniplast of the datapad, it contains nothing he doesn’t expect after spending the last six months having pieces of his heart torn away by the constant gossip reports. For years, the galaxy has rotated on an axis named Shepard, and with her gone—and if that still doesn’t feel like some surreal statement—the news cycles find themselves repeating the same content, letting it splinter with the retelling. Each report seems to have less truth than the last, but there’s nothing in Anderson’s that shocks him.

Shepard had always put her crew before herself. He’d never known a day with her that hadn’t been that way. That she’d given her life saving Joker from his own obstinacy is unsurprising.

He archives the report and watches it slot itself into the folder containing unanswered messages from Wrex, Ashley, and the rest. There’s something awful and final about it, about Anderson’s name at the head of the column of former friends, that makes his gizzard twist. Proof that, despite her legend, despite the burdens placed on her, the impossible had happened. The Alliance’s brightest had fallen, and the hole left behind was as deep, as dark, as any gravity well left by a dying star.

Garrus catches himself hesitating, talon trembling over the inbox icon, and swears. An email from Hannah Shepard, now Captain of the Orizaba and decorated war veteran, is not something he can ignore for long.

Unlike Anderson’s words, sorrow doesn’t drip tangible and heavy from this message. If anything, it’s… coldness that seeps into his hands, even through his gloves, and that doesn’t track with the Hannah Shepard he’d met. Captain or not, the senior Shepard had been kind, laughing at his stumbling attempts at humor, eyes crinkled up into a smile when she listened to his stories of Shepard. There was always something _warm_ about her.

So the lifeless words—and the fact that Shepard isn’t here to roll her eyes at his shitty pun breaks his heart open a little more each time he comes up with one—chill him. The only time he sees the formality break is towards the bottom of the letter, saying she hasn’t reviewed the file she’s attached to the email, because it’s both painful and not meant for her.

Garrus tilts his head, curiosity beginning to edge out his exhaustion. Whatever the Captain had forwarded to him was obviously salvaged from a datapad or computer of sorts, given the string of coding numbers that titles it, and Shepard’s exasperated sigh when he doesn’t open it right away is as real as if she were reading over his shoulder.

Unsure what to expect, he opens the attachment, ignoring the antivirus warning him about accepting unsolicited files. It’s a document of some sort, and the header bears the seal of the Alliance. That would make sense, he thinks—every Alliance soldier signs away their technological privacy at the beginning of their tenure, and each galactic standard month, the batches of cached documents and logs are backed up in a giant Alliance data center that he’s been itching to see for over a year.

What… doesn’t make sense is how the Captain had gotten her hands on Shepard’s logs. As far as he’s aware, family isn’t generally allowed to parse those records. They’re kept in case the Alliance needs to cover its ass or prosecute a soldier. Before his mind can take the idea that an Alliance Captain had somehow abused her authority and run with it, Garrus reads the first sentence and stops dead.

Shudders.

There are no dialogue tags, nothing to identify the speaker other than the assumption that Hannah Shepard wouldn’t send him the logs of some random soldier, but he swears he can hear it tumbling out of Shepard’s mouth.

_I feel lost, Garrus._

The phantom voice in his ear sounds just like it had in his apartment, full of pain, of fear, that she’s never shown to her crew. If he closes his eyes, he can see her sitting on his couch, shaking hands folded around a cup of burnt coffee, sleep-tousled hair falling around her face in frizzed ringlets.

_I feel so lost_ , she’d confessed to him, looking vulnerable enough that his heart still hurts with the memory. And he’d gathered her against his chest, careful and slow, not wanting to scare her. _No_ , he’d said, running a reassuring hand down her back. _You’re right here, with me._

Except she isn’t.

An unknown enemy had taken the fragile beginning from that night and crushed it, leaving the Normandy a child’s broken toy abandoned over a planet no living being would willingly step foot on. Gravity will eventually pull the sad remnants down to the surface, the same as he’d pulled Shepard against him, and bury them. Erase the memory of the souls lost and wailing on its surface.

He debates with himself on whether he should finish the document. The depression that’s been creeping up on him isn’t likely to be banished by revisiting the could-have-been that Shepard’s death had ended, but, well… he has to _know_. If this is her last message to him, if this is the last piece of her he can have, he owes it to her memory and to himself to respect that.

That first sentence burns against his eyes the second time he reads it, too, but he swallows past the emotions and continues.

_God. I can’t do this._ He can imagine her hands fisted in her hair, as they so often had been when she was wrestling with something difficult—he isn’t sure if the memory hurts more than it doesn’t. _You’re not even here and I can’t say it. How the hell am I going to when you’re staring at me?_

_End transcript._ There’s a timestamp and date, a few weeks after her breakdown in his apartment, and then the log picks up again.

_Deleted Text: ~~God. I can’t do this. You’re not even here and I can’t say it. How the hell am I going to when you’re staring at me?~~_

_Begin Transcript._

_I, uh, I’ve been thinking. That night, in your apartment. It’s been on my mind. A lot._

_…a lot._

_…oh, for fuck’s—_

_End transcript._

In his mind, in the golden, peaceful sphere that’s still in denial that she’s gone, dozens—hundreds—thousands of memories of day to day life with Shepard coalesce, bringing the log to life. Shepard paces across her small quarters, hair pulled into a loose braid that bounces against her back as she stalks. A familiar snarl curls her mouth, wrinkles her freckled nose. It’s the same expression that sent ensigns and interns diving out of her way, made intelligence officers turn their backs and make their hands busy to avoid having that steely gray gaze land on them.

Garrus always thought it was a little cute, but he’d valued his life too much to say it out loud.

_Begin transcript._

_Okay. Okay, I can do this. I’ve got this._

_…who am I kidding, I suck at this._

Garrus laughs a little as his memory-Shepard shakes her head, kicking the uncomfortable Alliance-standard chair out of her way.

_I’m Commander fucking Shepard, why can’t I just tell a guy I have feelings for him!_

…wait, what?

He rereads that sentence until it’s seared into his mind, until the curves and angles of the neutral type-face the Alliance uses burn themselves into his heart.

Feelings for him.

Feelings for him.

Feelings. For. Him.

Garrus’ first thought is an incoherent mess comprised mostly of gasping and a buzzing noise irritatingly similar to a malfunctioning machine. His second thought is loud, noisy joy—before his third thought reminds him, coldly and without mercy, that Shepard is dead. He’s reading the words of a dead woman who… who…

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” he says, like it’s not the first time he’s said anything aloud all night. Part of him screams to shut the document, to close it, delete it and pretend he never set eyes on it. There’s more to it, he knows, but a very real, visceral fear grips him by the fringe and holds tight. He barely survived losing Shepard when he’d thought the feelings were just his burden.

Knowing otherwise might…

But no. Shying away from a painful truth is cowardice, and Garrus grew out of that when he’d stood at Shepard’s side, staring at the body of Saleon. He clicks the power on the datapad and picks up where he left off.

_Shit_ , is the next line, and his memory-Shepard looks every bit as exhausted as he’s ever seen her, _it’s not like he’s going to actually read this. If I can’t be honest here… I think I knew it for sure when I fell apart on him. But the clues where there before, too—I took him on damn near every mission, spent a lot of sleepless nights reminding myself about regulations. Finding excuses to be in the cargo hold, to work next to him._

_I’ve started this log half a dozen times or more just trying to work it out. Started a dozen more to mom, wondering if she’d be able to tell me anything. Then I remind myself that she and dad have been apart for years, so._

_Guess falling in love with someone you can’t have is a Shepard trait._

_…_

_Oh, fuck. Computer, delete log 21831008._

Numb, Garrus closes the log, revealing the Captain’s email, and sets it aside. His Mantis shakes in his hands as he sights a couple of old ryncol bottles left on the bridge by some unfortunate souls, but he doesn’t squeeze the trigger. He _can’t_. Every muscle locks in place, strung tighter than a Volus’ wallet, and he doesn’t even care because moving his sight from one bottle to the next is the only thing keeping him from collapsing.

Shepard…

Shepard had loved him.

…and then, with an explosion that had done the unthinkable, he’d lost any chance he had to tell her the same.

***

The last message still flickers on the abandoned screen when the artificial morning comes and Erash and Mierin come to relieve him from watch:

_Cp. H. Shepard: Loss_

 


	19. Kiss Prompt 50: In Secret (Warden/Cullen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a mistake.
> 
> It’s the only thought Valira can hear over the pounding of her heart.
> 
> _This is a mistake._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mild au take on surana mage origin

50 – In Secret Kiss

Valira/Cullen

***

***

This is a mistake.

It’s the only thought Valira can hear over the pounding of her heart.

_This is a mistake._

Jowan? A blood mage? That would be like—like saying  _Anders_  was a blood mage. The three of them sat through the same classes, heard the same lectures, saw the diagrams and read the accounts from victims of  _maleficarum._  One and all, those who survived mages abusing their mana were traumatized, left scarred or disabled and those were the lucky ones, to say nothing of those left trapped in their own nightmares. Surely,  _surely_ , Jowan wouldn’t have resorted to the darkest of arts after years of warnings. But the proof is there, in front of her eyes, splashed garish and unmistakable across the dark Circle floor.

Jowan is a blood mage.

Jowan, who’d been the first to befriend her when she’d entered the Tower as a child. Who’d shared a dormitory, secrets, dusty tomes and midnight laughter. Who’d risked punishments to steal extra food for them when she and Anders were sick. Who’d been teased for jumping at his own shadow.

Jowan, who cowers from what he’s done, hands dripping rubies to splatter at his feet. Who turns to her with wide, wounded eyes and mouths an apology before he runs, flinging the heavy tower doors open. He leaves behind a thick handprint, blistering the wood the way the forbidden magic sizzles across Greagoir’s chestplate.

Her ears ring, memories filling up the spaces where words should be until she sees Irving struggling to sit up. “Are,” the old man wheezes, falling back to his elbow. Between one breath and the next, she’s got her hands wrapped around his arm, helping him to his feet. Under her touch, Irving’s arm is thinner than she remembers, and though he has never appeared his age in all her long years at the Circle, she sees for the first time just how  _old_  he is.

“Are you all right?” he asks, one shaking hand reaching for her shoulder. “Where is Greagoir?”

“Here.” The Knight-Commander grunts, wiping at his warping plate with disgust. “Blood magic,” he spits, eyeing her with fury, as if she’d twisted Jowan’s arm until he learned the art. “I never thought him capable of such power.”

Neither had she. Jowan’s progress as a mage has always been limited by his lack of strength. Taking down a First Enchanter and a Templar Knight-Commander was unthinkable.

It’s easy enough to step back, press her back to the wall when the shouting starts. The cold stone of the tower feels comforting, for once, and in some fashion, Valira knows it’s keeping her grounded. She’s no stranger to panic attacks, but there’s a… distant feeling to the evening, a sense of  _not-real_. Like if she closes her eyes, she’ll open them to see her old apprentice dorms. Jowan will be standing there, watching her with that nervous-but-kind smile. Even Anders will be there, because surely he wasn’t sitting under her feet, in the tower confinement cells. No, she decides. Anders will be there and Jowan and her friends are safe and— and—

“Val?”

She jumps, knocking the back of her head against the stone. A Templar in front of her hisses in sympathy when she yelps and, looking over his shoulder at the arguing men, gently steers her through the hall to a small room. The waiting room where new children stay for a few hours while supplies and dorms are made up for them is barely recognizable in the darkness, but reveals itself as the Templar lights the sconces behind the intake desk. How fitting, she thinks, that her academic career should end in the room it began in.

A metallic rasp catches her attention as the Templar takes his helmet off and shakes out a head of messy blond curls. Val almost smiles because if there’s one person on her side in this whole damn tower aside from Irving, it’s Cullen, and at least not all of her friends are gone.

“Drink.” Cullen hands her a cup of water and wraps his hands around hers. At first she thinks it’s an excuse to touch her— their friendship isn’t exactly a secret and has earned her more than one reprimand—until she feels a splash on her knees and sees how badly her hands are trembling. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”

“…oh,  _Maker,_ ” she whispers, the truth starting to set in. Jowan is gone, doomed to be hunted by Templars just like Cullen.

For a moment, she sees the fight happen again—Jowan flinging that scorching blood spell at the Templars, only this time, instead of it being Greagoir and his armor that suffers, it’s Cullen writhing on the floor in agony, screaming. The cup slips from their hands and shatters on the floor and the sharp sound breaks something in her. From the moment Jowan had locked eyes with her, she’d been constructing an emotional dam to hold the reality of this nightmare back, but it explodes into pieces on the floor, right next to the pottery, and then she is sobbing into a chest of silverite armor.

“Shh.” Cullen’s hands on her shoulders are awkward and too big, like he’s never touched someone in comfort before. But it doesn’t take long before he figures out how to gently run his hand down her back, once he deposits his gauntlets on the bench next to her. How long she leans against him and cries isn’t clear, but her wits don’t start returning until the second time someone clears their throat at the door.

Despite knowing that Templars are trained soldiers, despite having snuck around to watch their drills and giggle over pretty ones with other apprentices, Cullen’s speed shocks her. Before she can blink, he’s standing in front of her, one hand on his sword and the other keeping her safely behind him.

“Do you think I’m going to harm my own apprentice?” Irving’s voice says, sounding exhausted and… sad.

Only when Cullen relaxes, one hand sheepishly rubbing across the back of his neck, does he allow her to step around him. Irving smells like blood and burning things when she wraps her arms around his skinny chest, a grim change from the half-remembered hugs he’d tolerated when she was younger. It’s only with the greatest reluctance that she lets the old man step back and rest his hands on her shoulders.

“You will be going with Duncan, child.” Irving turns her world upside down with seven flat, tired words. “Greagoir will not hear of you staying in the Circle.”

But…

“I was working for  _you._ ” Val’s arms wrap around herself as the panic builds in her chest again. They can’t make her leave. It’s not possible. “Trying to prove—Jowan—but… I—I can’t leave. The Circle is my home!”

“I know, child.” Something flickers in the First Enchanter’s gaze as he looks at her, face crumpling slightly. Years of unsaid words float between them, master and apprentice. Of all her mentors, Irving has always been the kindest, the warmest. Valira can’t remember her father, can remember little but a haze of wood and sails and words in a tongue that means nothing to her now. But in her heart, the question of father has only one answer, and he stands before her with scorched robes and… pity in his eyes.

He pities her.

Irving hesitates—his desire to hurt the Chantry-maid as retribution for losing Jowan has sullied the affection that has bound them for over a decade, and the look on his face tells Valira that he knows it.

“Duncan will take care of you,” is all he says after that before turning away and pausing at the door. “If you have good-byes to say, I can stall Greagoir for a few moments.”

There’s something cold and final about the click of the door as Irving shuts it behind him, and it’s all Val can do to not fall to her knees. Top marks as an apprentice will mean nothing outside of the Circle. For all her mana and ability, Valira knows herself. Anders had teased her often enough about being more bookworm than mage—

Anders.

Anders is in the dungeon. He won’t know that Jowan’s gone. That  _she’s_  gone. There’ll be no one to look after him.

Cullen hovers behind her, shifting uneasily on his feet. “Val…”

“I can’t be a Grey Warden!” she blurts out, dropping back onto the bench behind her. She can feel just how wide her eyes are when they lock on Cullen’s, can guess at how terrified she looks. “I’m—I’m just an apprentice!”

“You’re a talented, Harrowed mage,” he reminds her, voice soft as he takes a knee in front of her. “Your Harrowing was textbook, Val. I was there, remember?”

That’s right. Cullen had tripped over his own tongue the next time she’d seen him after her Harrowing, admitting that he’d been the Templar assigned the deathblow if she hadn’t come back.

“Textbook,” Val murmurs, blinking. “Textbooks make sense to me. Exams make sense to me.” She draws in a shuddering breath. “Most Warden recruits don’t survive past their first year. Whatever must be done to turn them into Wardens taxes the body too much. What if I can’t? What if I don’t make it and I d—”

“What if there’s a hero hiding under this scholar’s robe?” Cullen asks, interrupting her increasingly-panicked words with a warm hand on her cheek. “If you stay, Greagoir will make your life hell. Irving won’t be able to protect you from him.” When he meets her eyes, he looks… almost sad. “Neither will I.”

Months of stolen moments lay between them: late-night talks during her midnight studies, a fleeting smile across a crowded hall. The sun glinting off his armor as he walks next to her, grass damp and impossibly green under their feet. Less than a year since a stuttering, awkward Templar had shivered in the cold and asked if she knew where he could get a heating rune. And still, Cullen hasn’t quite lost that endearing bashfulness that so starkly contrasted the hard-faced jailers most Templars are.

“I’m going to miss you,” Val says softly, her fingers covering his.

Cullen looks startled and she hesitates for a brief moment, half a dozen loud, over-thought scenarios fluttering around in her head before she pitches forward and brushes her lips against his, chaste and soft. It isn’t like she’s never thought about it, and the rumors circling the Tower paint a picture of Cullen being smitten with her. They’ve never talked about it—the gap of power is too great for anything but a distant ache of what could have been if things were different—and now that she’s leaving… well. It’s not like they can punish either of them for dallying, right?

When she pulls away, Cullen’s breath is decidedly uneven and the shocked expression on his face doesn’t change. “Thank you for your kindness,” Val says, squeezing his fingers. “And your friendship.”

It’s not the good-bye he deserves, but it’s all she has time for as Duncan knocks on the door and tells her he’s ready to leave.


	20. I Love You Prompt 19: No Space Between Us (Alistair/Cousland)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“…I want to love you, too,” he whispers, trying not to look vulnerable. “Am I fooling myself? Or do you think you might ever… feel the same way about me?”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“If I do,” she says, running her thumb across his lower lip, “you’ll be the first to know.”_

19 - “I love you” with no space left between us for Alistair/Cousland

***

***

Aletha Cousland has dealt with a lot of things in her short life: growing up with Fergus as a big brother does a lot for giving someone a thick skin, and playing the games of the nobility has kept her mind sharp since she was old enough to understand that nothing can be taken at face value.

So when Alistair hands her a rose—a beautiful, near-glowing blossom, with waxen petals and a heady scent—she searches his face for hidden meanings before she tucks it into her pack. A rose is never just a rose, after all, and she’s long outgrown the fairy tales memorized at her mother’s knee about shining knights and soft-life romances.

Nothing about their journey so far has been soft. A single night took her from favored noble daughter to orphan, put her on the path she walks now with tired feet and squinting eyes. When Wynne, with her shocking stamina and graceful step, says that perhaps they should make camp for the night, Aletha’s first instinct is to say no, to push the party farther. But when the sentiment is echoed by the others, even her beloved mabari, she agrees, silently planning the next day's journey. Every step they take on this road brings her one step closer to her blade at Rendon Howe’s throat; it can’t be delayed for long.

That’s the secret she’s keeping from them: saving Ferelden is second in the darkest pits of her heart to killing Howe and avenging her family.

Zevran suspects it—she can tell when he looks at her, when that flirtatious smirk can’t hide the shrewd mind behind it. Long nights have passed with the two of them trading stories, listening to his tales of Crows and Antiva and filing away every bit of useful information. She watches carefully when he demonstrates techniques, when he and Leliana tease and train and the three of them collapse back on the grass and laugh. They are good friends, the three thieves, but she hasn’t told them more than necessary about her parents’ murder.

Wynne, she thinks, also suspects. The old woman looks like a harmless grandmother, but there’s a core of iron behind that wrinkled face. Her stories of magic lately have been tinted with forgiveness and moving past, of not letting emotion drive her, but that’s not Aletha. _Fergus_ was the kind, soft-hearted one— Teyrn Cousland’s youngest thrives on emotion, on fire, and the longer she thinks about her father’s dying gasps and her mother’s terrified eyes, the hotter that fire blazes.

“Thinking hard?”

Aletha looks back at Alistair as he crouches next to her, smile shifting from bright to soft and unsure. One sigh and a warm hand on her shoulder later, he’s sprawled out in the grass next to her, smiling up at the grumbling sky. She can’t quite help the smile when she says, “Well, it isn’t a chore for _me._ ”

“Ouch.” Alistair laughs, free and loud, startling birds from the tree next to them. One hand splays across his leather jerkin and he fixes her with a devilish grin that warms her cheeks. “The lady wields daggers _and_ words.”

“Only when called for,” she says, pulling her knees up to her chest. The mention of her daggers makes her fingers twitch against her boots, and another piece of kindling is added to the bonfire in her heart.

For all his bluster, and despite what Morrigan says to the contrary, Alistair isn’t stupid. Loud, jovial, and occasionally sugary sweet, yes. But not stupid. He doesn’t push for her to talk as they watch the clouds roll in, the threat of rain heavy and pressing. She catches him looking at her the first time lightning streaks across the sky and lifts an eyebrow at his strangely-serious expression.

“We’re going to get him, you know.” Alistair sits up easily, hesitantly wrapping one arm around her shoulders. Aletha doesn’t resist as he pulls her a little closer, as his warmth sinks into her. “We’ll get Howe for what he did to your family.”

…so he knows, too.

For the first time, Aletha feels a twinge of discomfort. Of all their companions, Alistair is the one that doesn’t make sense to her. Zevran and Leliana both run from their pasts, one with sex appeal and one with the robes of a Chantry sister. Wynne and Oghren also make a certain amount of sense, drowning their pains and scars. Even Sten is easy enough to understand, at least on the surface. Months of traveling together has given her insight to everyone except the lost Theirin prince.  

And… the rose she still carries in her pack, crystalized by Morrigan’s magic, confuses her. She’s replayed that moment in her mind every night since, cataloguing every expression between then and now, and she’s no closer to finding a hidden motive beyond what he’d told her. With a smirk or a quip, she can earn Zevran’s approval, but it doesn’t warm her the way Alistair’s slow, earnest smile does. The first time he kisses her, he _asks_ , and that is a courtesy the nobles she knew as a child never gave her.

It isn’t until they reach Denerim—and she is almost vibrating with the need to spill Howe’s blood—that she sees that easy prince’s smile crack. Oh, it’s still there, slapped across his lips like an insult, but those eyes are so _wounded_ as Goldanna spews bitterness across him. Aletha takes a step forward, hand reaching for something, anything, to end her unfeeling tirade, but Alistair’s hand—warm, trembling, tentative—on the small of her back stops her. She settles for backing the hateful woman down with a snarl as Alistair fumbles on his belt.

His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes when he holds out a small bag of coins and the woman snatches them from his hand like he might change his mind, and it still hasn’t gained any of the spark Alistair’s usual jibes have even when they return to the inn, hours later. He isn’t present for dinner, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed, and when the rest of their party retires to their rooms, Aletha runs into Zevran in the hall as they both reach for the door.

After a tense and almost embarrassing moment, Zevran inclines his head and runs a hand down her arm. “Take care with him, my friend. He is hurting.”

The door only creaks slightly as she eases it open, but the destruction inside the room shocks her into silence. Alistair stands in front of the driftwood bed, shoulders heaving as his hands wrap around the bedpost. Books are strewn on the floor by his feet, covers thrown wide like birds fallen to the ground, and the mirror she can see on the opposite wall is cracked.

“Not now, Zev,” Alistair says, sounding as if he’s forcing the words through clenched teeth.

“Charming though I can be,” Aletha replies softly, “I haven’t suddenly turned blonde and smartassed.”

She steps over the scattered pieces of his travel pack and lays her palm on his back. When he turns to her, she’s not surprised to see the remnants of tear-tracks, and the last wary stone in the wall separating them starts to crumble. Whatever he sees in her face makes his crumple and then she is swept into his arms. Alistair has never touched her without express permission, but the way he reels her in speaks of need and _pain_ , and in this, she is happy enough to serve _._ The breath he pulls in, the way it shudders through his lungs as though he’s trying not to shake apart as he holds her, makes her heart ache for him.

And it’s then, hearing his muffled sob, with the careful, cheerful mask he’s worn since they met stripped away, that Aletha finally understands him. In a way, Goldanna has been just as cruel as Howe. A short period of time is all it took for the future to crumble to ashes in both their mouths, but Alistair has spent years imagining a reunion with his sister. Years that she now knows were long and miserable, spent sleeping in the mabari dens and being abandoned by his family, training for a career he never wanted.

There will be time later, she thinks, to teach him how to guard his heart, to deter people who will use that hard-won goodness against him. For now, his defenses are laid low and it is enough of a challenge to coax him into sitting on the bed. Neither of them speaks as leathers are stripped off and she settles on the mattress next to him, or as he stretches his long legs out and pillows his head on her shoulder.

Aletha finds her fingers running through his hair, a half-forgotten song from her childhood humming in her throat, and the two of them half-asleep before he finally speaks:

“I wanted to love her.”

“I know, Alistair,” she replies softly, tilting his face towards hers.

Alistair’s eyes rove restlessly over her features, a frown lingering somewhere in the line of his mouth. It’s a generous mouth, she knows, ready to reassure, to smile, to crack a terrible joke—or kiss a nightmare away, in her case. In some way, his carefree behavior has been a shield, one of the defenses he uses: Aletha hides in her fury, in the need to stand over Rendon Howe and hear his last, desperate breath, so that she doesn’t have to feel the pain of her losses, while Alistair tucks his away like a bad dream and loses himself in service to someone else.

“…I want to love you, too,” he whispers, trying not to look vulnerable. “Am I fooling myself? Or do you think you might ever… feel the same way about me?”

“If I do,” she says, running her thumb across his lower lip, “you’ll be the first to know.”

His hand is hesitant as it brushes a stray copper curl from her cheek, but he nods. “That’s fair.”

Quiet falls between them as the moon outside the small, filthy window begins to rise. Oghren’s snores carry from even down the hall, and she can hear Zevran’s soft curses as he tries to block the sound. Alistair chuckles against her shoulder, and Aletha takes a minute to appreciate it.

“Alistair?”

“Mm?” He lifts his head as she steps out of the bed to rummage in her leathers, for the secret she keeps tucked away near her heart.

“What are you—oh.” Alistair blinks as she presses the crystal rose into his hands when she returns. It’s almost as good as a confession, if she reads his face right, but his eyes gleam as they fix on hers.

“I might never have licked a lamppost in winter,” she smirks, folding her hands around his as he flushes, “but maybe once upon a time, I fell in love with a prince.”

Alistair hums thoughtfully, eyes dropping to the rose cupped in their hands. “And is he… handsome, this prince of yours?”

“Ehh.” She shrugs, unable to resist teasing him. “I’ve seen worse.” Sheets rustle as she leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth, lingering long enough to feel him smile. “But he’s sweet, and kind, and he deserves to be happy.”

The way he looks at her then, eyes wide and disbelieving, is as if she’s the only thing worth seeing in the world. Adoration pours from his gaze, from the tremble in his hand as he cups her cheek— so different from the way he’d shaken before, broken-hearted and angry— to bring their lips together once, twice, a third time. Some of the light Goldanna stole from him returns as she grins at him, and when he buries his face in her neck and laughs, she knows there’s no secret space, no protective distances, left between them—he’s broken down the walls around her heart, and to her surprise, it’s no real loss.

And when Aletha looks out at the stars later that night, with Alistair coiled around her and a happy, golden glow nestled safely in her heart, she wonders if maybe her mother hadn’t been on to something with those fairy tales after all.


	21. Lost Words prompt: Pication - Shakarios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strange choice, human and turian, _Mordin says in his mind, clever hands dancing over a datapad._ Will have to observe effects of drell neurotoxin in dextro-amino lifeforms. May publish if fascinating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more i dabble in my Shepard's head, the more i get serious ot3 vibes. so. here we go. garrus/shepard/thane magic, coming right up.

_Pication_ : application of warm pitch to the skin as medical treatment

***  
***

The pain is the first thing he feels: a great, burning ache in his chest, rattling through his bones with every attempted breath and spreading a blaze of fire like a star erupting in slow motion, a supernova stretching out over millions of years. Every movement of his chest sends more sparks swarming his bloodstream, setting fire to every nerve ending between his throat and his belly.

“Stay  _still,_  dammit!”

Shepard’s face swims into view, blurred by the pain. Faintly, he can hear a wet-sounding gasp, and see a delicately-scaled green hand reaches for her cheek—he almost doesn’t recognize his own limb until the pull of his shoulder muscle as he brushes a finger against her skin sends a new wave of agony scorching down his chest. Those steel-gray eyes are leveled at him, filled with a fury he’s rarely seen someone face and walk away alive, and her teeth are bared in a snarl that would be called feral on anyone else.

“Shepard…” Garrus’ voice rumbles from above him somewhere, though the erratic way his vision moves can’t pin his location down. “Thane needs  _help._ ”

“I’m trying!” She presses against Thane’s chest and—oh, that’s—dark blood flecks her fingers, the rich gold of her skin lessening the shock of color. “Joker, can you hear me?  _Joker!_ ”

He feels a soft brush of a glove against his crest, and Garrus’ shadow falls across Thane’s face, cool and so reassuring, it is almost solid. Several thoughts coalesce in Thane’s mind at once, memories surfacing through the fog of pain:  _Longing in his eyes, restless as they follow her footsteps. I understand it well. Two pairs of eyes meet mine, blue and gray, both nervous, both sparkling. Shepard licks her lips and says she wants me._ They _want me. “More than sex, Thane,” her voice is quiet, but firm, palm out for mine. “We just sort of… fit together?”_

“Shepard, either we get him back to the shuttle or he dies!” There is a low subvocal keen of distress and anger under Garrus’ voice, and that soft glove is back on Thane’s head, tilting his face up.  _Lips against mouth plates. Firm but not immobile, more expressive than most see. His mandibles flutter against my skin, soft and hesitant, used to kissing Shepard, used to females instead. To be his first…_

“I know that, Garrus!” she snaps, ripping the cloth of his tunic aside. “EDI, aborting mission, have Mordin ready med bay!”

 _Strange choice, human and turian,_  Mordin says in his mind, clever hands dancing over a datapad.  _Will have to observe effects of drell neurotoxin in dextro-amino lifeforms. May publish if fascinating._

“Done, Shepard.”

She must have said something else, but the rushing of blood in Thane’s ear drowns her out. He feels an arm supporting his neck, sliding under his knees, and then he coughs, vision graying at the edge as Garrus lifts him as gently as possible. It still sends agony screaming through him, sharp and loud enough to make him gasp and this time, he can feel the blood bubbling to his mouth, splattering Garrus’ visor. Shepard swears in a language his translator doesn’t recognize, a faint biotic corona haloing her face as she  _pushes_  the dense foliage aside, every inch the warrior-angel he’s named her. As Thane fades into cool unconsciousness, the only word winding through in his mind, cool and slick like silk, is  _siha_.

***

When the world returns, he feels something heavy and warm on his chest, easing the knots in the muscle. Somewhere distant, he can feel the weight of Shepard’s hands in his, curled loose and trusting around his fingers. To his right, the door opens and the smell of Shepard’s coffee swhirls about him.

“How is he?” Garrus asks, voice quiet. The coffee scent grows stronger and one of Shepard’s hands leaves his.

“Mordin says he’ll be all right,” she whispers, sounding hoarse and ragged enough to make Thane’s heart clench. “The plaster can come off soon. He was able to synthesize some antihistamine and bring the swelling down, but the coughing fit damaged his lungs some. Still some fluid there.”

Fluid? Antihistamine? Ah, the flower. Opting for stealth, he and Garrus chose to through a thicket of plants to take a bead on the camp, covering Shepard as she flanked it, hands curled tight around her shotgun. Passing through a cluster of wildly multicolored flowers— strong reds, blues, and purples so deep, it seems to ripple—to take his position had been the start of the trouble. Within minutes, his chest began filling with fluid, throat closing before he could even speak a warning. Tapping his comm microphone had brought Garrus with a short, sharp curse, Shepard winding through to them.

“Allergic reaction leading to pulmonary edema and throat closure,” Mordin confirms, as if summoned by the memory. Thin fingers rest on his wrist, above Shepard’s hand, then on his throat. “Conscious but needs rest. Will remove you if necessary.”

“Thane?” Shepard moves her hand to his cheek and somewhere deep down, Thane finds the strength to open his eyes in time to see her relieved smile. There are tear tracks, streaks of freckled gold, through the grime on her face and his fingers burn to touch them, but he knows better than to try. “Hey, you.”

His tongue feels thick and clumsy in his mouth, but he manages to respond with a soft, exhaled, “ _Siha_.”

“Don’t scare us like that,” Garrus says from near his feet, and with a grunt of effort and a sharp gasp of pain, Thane lifts his head enough to see him. The plates over his brows are drawn down, mandibles tight to his face with worry, but the talon—bare, dulled, familiar and warm—circling his ankle is loose and mostly relaxed; his thumb strokes the bone there in a gesture of unconscious comfort. “I think Shepard broke a few laws of physics getting back to the Normandy.”

“I will try,  _sawa_ ,” Thane manages, lowering his head again, the endearment sweet as honey in his mouth. "It will take more than a flower to part us."

His eyes drift shut, lulled to a semi-sleep by the warmth of Shepard’s hand and the familiar buzz of a flanged voice. Irikah is still a deep wound in his heart, edges ragged and bitter, time and distance unable to dull them, but the presence of Shepard and Garrus is a salve, warm and thick as pitch, easing the sting as it spreads over the wound; had he known that in joining Cerberus’ suicide mission he would find not one but two more great loves…  

And he does love them, this matched, alien pair with their tired eyes and aching hearts. Shepard is correct, they just “fit” together, and the years he spent in battle-sleep are falling away like scales shed in a brisk wind. Shepard is all curves and deception, her lips fast with a smirk and slow to words. She has earned the command stripes on the shoulders of the dress uniform he’s seen hanging—the only thing hanging—in her closet and he thinks that if she weren’t wasting herself with Cerberus’ suicide mission, she’d be in line for a true command rank.

Her eyes tell the truth, though. Most species’ do, if you know how to look. Those oceans of gray remind him of Kahje, of the iron-colored clouds that roll over the sky and rumble with the threat of rain, of the way the seas look at their deepest, past the inviting blue-green shallows, where the depths are cold and unexplored and even Hanar fear to swim. They’re at odds with the warm auburn of her hair, a heavy, silken mass the color of Irikah’s eyes, and the sun-kissed dark of her skin, with the way her presence sets his heart thumping and warms him like a star.

And Garrus. Exhaustion is stamped into his face, etched into the grooves of his plates, a constant reminder of his past. Thane has heard, in the quiet darkness of Life Support, the wounds Garrus carries on his own soul, the team he’d chosen only to lose. The loss of Shepard and finding out her feelings for him after the fact. “I swear,” he said one night, the spiced tea long since run out, fingers tangled together; still shy, still tentative, “when she vaulted over that barricade, I thought I was dead. A spirit was coming for me and I was  _okay with it_  because it meant being with Shepard again.”

Thane understands. His  _siha_ —no,  _their_   _siha_ —is divinity given form and flesh, deified through her own actions. Things that should have killed her have only straightened her spine, fueled her stubborn streak; even truly being dead hadn’t held her, thanks to the scientists and cybernetics. Shepard is their guiding light, his and Garrus’, and she stormed her way into their hearts, uniting them. The two of them together are powerful, flawless pieces of a whole: biotic and soldier, reckless and calm, brute force and precision targeting.

But the three of them, ah. Truly they are a masterpiece, in absolute sync with one another. Lethal in their precision, armored with an unspoken trust so deep as to be a sea to itself. How perfect, how breathtaking it is, to fight in such an arrangement, to move and countermove and know that he has to slow down for no one, has to compensate for no one. The dance is heady and intoxicating, just as they themselves are, and he will happily spend the rest of his numbered days, Omega-4 relay or no, finally matched in heart and soul.

His lips curve in a smile, feeling the air around Shepard shift as she leans down to brush her mouth over his, lingering until Mordin clears his throat.

“ _Na’u ˋoe,_ ” she whispers, lips trailing up to his brow, unfazed by their medic's impatience, “ _a nou wau_.” He doesn’t have to understand her ancestral tongue to know what she has said, to know a loving claim when he hears one, and as he parses her words, the tide of sleep close at hand, the pool of warmth in his chest grows. The love of such a pair is a gift he’s unworthy of, a gift that spreads through him slow and thick, delicious in its decadence, but it’s a gift that not even the pain of Kepral’s can take from him. 

Here, on this silent ship, in the darkness of space, he has found a home. Where he belongs.

 _You’re mine,_  he thinks, slipping into a dream of freckled skin soft under his hands and the tremble of mandibles against his throat,  _and I am yours._


	22. Christmas Prompt 34: Christmas Eve - Shakarios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There’s a ghost of him everywhere she looks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post Priority: Tuchanka and Priority: Citadel II

Christmas – 34 Christmas Eve – ShaKaRios

***

***

A long time ago, this had been her favorite time of year, as much as there are yearly calendars in the depths of space. Every Alliance ship with Christians aboard celebrates some form of Christmas, so much so that the non-human allies take up the tradition as well; the Normandy is no exception to that rule, but she can’t handle the festivities tonight. Thane might have given her a small smile, a quiet quip about hiding from the noise and cheer down in the mess hall, but he’d have understood. He’d have sat with her, needing no words or explanations, their hands loosely clasped.

There’s a ghost of him everywhere she looks.

The bed around her, that space where they had lain so many times, legs and sheets tangled together. Sometimes just the two of them, sometimes fighting for space with the long, plated legs of their other partner. Tonight, it’s cold and empty, and she keeps her eyes trained on the viewport above.

The couch, where she’d lain, fingers busy, as the boys had explored each other without the distraction of her between them. The desk, where calls had kept them connected after her release from detention. Still dented from the night before the Omega 4 relay. The fishtank, the stupid ship models, the fucking _stairs_ to the door-- it’s all covered with memories.

So she looks at the stars, and ignores the tears that blur her vision every so often.

Watching them go by is an exercise.

She isn’t sure what kind of exercise it is: Samara mediates in front of a wide-open viewscreen, watching the stars pass as she, oh, how did she put it? “Looks out on the great empty void” or something. Supposedly it was comforting for her to meditate on the emptiness.

Shepard doesn’t find it comforting; she just doesn’t have the energy to look anywhere else.

_When a memory feels as real as life, it is as valid as life. Thinking about a moment brings back the smell of cut grass, the warmth of another’s hand on yours. The taste of another’s tongue in your mouth. Wouldn’t you rather lose yourself in such a memory than spend the night alone, staring at walls of metal and plastic?_

Thane’s voice fades back into the depths of her mind and another thought, this one her own, adds to the memory: _Or at space that seems just a little emptier._

Her lips bow in what she knows is a bitter smile, a long tree blown over by too-strong winds. Humans don’t have the curse of Drell perfect memories but she knows by now that the memory of Thane’s final hours will be as clear and cold as crystal until the last of her breath leaves her body: His blood cool and dark on her fingers, seeping into her gloves; Bailey’s voice in her ear, demanding to know what was going on; the physical, awful pain splitting her heart in two as she balanced staying by Thane’s side or saving the Councils’ worthless asses again.

_How bad is it?_

_I have time. Catch him._

The distance between the stars seems… bigger, somehow. Colder without him.

Spending most of her childhood, island summers aside, on Alliance ships left Shepard with a deep love of stars and all the secrets of space. Once, long ago, it had seemed full of promise, mysteries waiting to be solved. She’d wanted to see things no human eyes had ever seen.

 _Be careful what you wish for_ is the most ironic statement in her life. She has seen things no human eyes have seen, so she’s gotten her wish. Knowing that she’s the first person to see the Collectors, to see a Prothean, to see the Reapers… none of that is a comfort. Not when it’s cost her so much.

“Shepard?”

She doesn’t look up as Garrus approaches, as his weight dents the edge of the bed. Clasps click as he undoes his boots, shoves them under the edge of the bed where, in the morning, he’ll curse and grunt as he tries to dig them out again. It’s a familiar sound, an expected result, and one lone spot of comfort in the cold shroud she’s pulled over so many memories.

He sighs as he stretches out next to her, brow plates lowered in concern. It must be late-- he’s stopped by his nearly-unused quarters in the battery to change, the fresh civvies showing the alien dips and curves of his body in a way his armor never does. Smartly, he makes no attempt to touch her; it’s a relief, really, because Shepard’s spent so much time the last few weeks gluing herself together and telling herself she’s okay that one careful brush of his hand might be enough to crumble that facade and show them both just how not okay she is.

Something scorches her throat, tightening her windpipe, as Garrus carefully turns to face her.

“I miss him, too,” he says simply, and those words are so small, so quiet in the humming blackness of her cabin-- their cabin-- to cause such a crack in the facade.

It’s almost a sound, this crumbling of her defenses, and the roaring of her pulse in her ears is so loud, she’s surprised she can hear anything else at all. For half a moment, Shepard considers keeping her eyes trained on the stars, trying to pull the broken pieces of herself back together the way a child tries to tape a broken plate, but knows that it’s only herself she’s spiting if she ignores the comfort he offers.

With a sigh, she turns and buries her face into the hollow of his neck between mandible and cowl, long years of practice making the move easy and unconscious.

“Kai Leng is a dead man,” she whispers, though she isn’t sure whether the promise is to Garrus, to herself, or to the ghost of Thane watching them. “I will ram that knife through his chest if it kills me.”

“Hey.” Garrus tilts her face up, blue eyes intent. “ _We_ will take him out. Together.”

They’re quiet for a moment, a shared pain heavy between them, before she gives in and brushes her mouth against his. It’s permission, of a sort, an invitation to step over the shattered pieces of her barriers and into the core of who she is again. His sigh of relief is a small thing, but heartfelt just the same, and in the moment before he kisses her again, Shepard feels a pang of guilt for shutting him out for so long.

***

“I actually came up here with a different purpose, you know,” Garrus says later, his hands warm on her naked skin.

“Oh?” Shepard sits up, sheet tucked around her breasts, a real smile breaking on her face for the first time in what feels like decades. “You mean you don’t look for every opportunity to seduce me?”

The sound Garrus makes as he sits and leans against the headboard is half amused, half sarcastic, and all together completely rude. It still makes her laugh, a rusty, pained sound that tells her exactly how long she’s spent locked up in her grief. How many times has she heard that sound when the three of them were together? More than she can count.

“I, um.” Garrus hesitates, throat tinged blue with embarrassment. “I have a present for you. Sort of.”

“Sort of? Do you have a present or don’t you?” Shepard allows him to draw her closer to his chest, until his breath stirs the curls on the back of her neck. “Also, you didn’t need to get me a present.”

“I wanted to,” he murmurs in her ear, reaching for a box she hadn’t noticed him carrying in. “We wanted to.”

Shepard’s hands are steady only by force of will as she accepts the gift, reads the many signatures on the tag. Liara’s elegant script is next to her father’s slanted scrawl. A symbol that Shepard both knows and can’t translate is in the purple Tali favors, her equivalent of a signature, and below all of that is a simple, crooked heart-- the same way she’d signed her first letter to Garrus, a million years and a lifetime ago.

Unsure what to expect from so many collaborators, Shepard reaches in and pulls out… a globe. A large one, perhaps eight inches in diameter. The first thing she notices is the water, a soft blue-green she’s only seen one place in the entire galaxy.

“Is that--?”

“Seawater, yes,” he answers, a twang of nerves lacing his subvocals. “Your father sent it to us when we asked how to replicate the color.”

As she watches, a small wave rolls across the globe, breaks on the smallest piece of shoreline she’s ever seen, and retreats. “And the sand?”

“From Palaven. Well.” His voice darkens with grief for a moment. “It’s supposedly from Palaven. Turian relics are going for premium prices, with the Reapers around, but a lot of them are fakes.”

A small ship, a catamaran as she hasn’t seen in years, bobs on the waves.

“Liara assembled the model biotically, and the waves are generated with a mass effect field so small, I didn’t think Tali could actually do it when I asked.”

The base the globe rests on is dark wood, carved with waves and the words _siha_ and _sawa._

“...this is koa wood,” she murmurs, eyes prickling.

“Your father sent that to us, as well.”

The wood is warm under her fingers, as if it’s been sitting in the sun of her home.

“And the carving?”

Garrus hesitates again and this time, the embarrassment is palpable. “I, uh. I did those.”

There’s no hiding the tremble of her hands this time so to be safe, Shepard stores the globe back in the box before she turns to him. They’re still trembling as she sets them on his chest and looks at him. One hand cups her cheek, thumb brushing away a tear, as the other wraps loosely around hers.

“He followed the hanar religion,” Garrus says, voice gone quiet. It’s barely audible, but the love and grief twined through it mirrors the aching loss in her heart so perfectly, she regrets the time they’ve spent apart since Thane’s death. “He said he’d meet us across the sea. And I know you miss your home, even though you so rarely talk about it. So I thought… a little piece of home— of both our homes— and a reminder of Thane’s promise…”

“Who knows,” he continues, brushing his mouth against her forehead. “Maybe we’ll even see Mordin there, collecting sea shells.”

“Maybe,” she agrees quietly, tilting her face up in a not-quite-request for a kiss. “But for now, at least we still have each other.”

“I like the idea of that.” He rests his chin in the hollow of her neck for a moment. “Mordin and Thane, raising hell waiting for us. It’s a nice thought.”

“Yeah, it is.” She sighs, kisses him again, and reaches for the box. “But let’s not rush off to meet them, okay?”

Carefully, so carefully, Shepard takes the globe out and lets Garrus position it on the table, turning it so that Thane’s endearments are facing them; the figures in English are stuttering and hesitant, though they’re covered up well and sanded. Underneath, she recognizes the bold, graceful lines of turian script, stronger and more confident. If she squints, if she lets her imagination and the one remaining hope in her heart free, she can almost see her one-horned salarian friend crouched on the miniature beach, searching for his shells.

And there, waves crashing around his ankles, a smile on his face, she can almost see Thane. One hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun, the other restless at his side, the only mark of his waiting. She can almost hear him, the way he whispers their names in that voice as dark and inviting as midnight confession, the way Mordin might enjoy her father’s ukulele. In her heart, it’s something beautiful to hold on to, however improbable.

Wordless, keeping the peace between them—a peace that both of them need, crave, after the weeks of separate mourning—she lets him lay back and settle her just right in the hollows of his carapace, talons bare and gentle on her skin. The rapid, once-strange thrum of Garrus’ heart echoes in her ear, the scent of warm sand and metal and sex around her, the quiet comfort of finally not feeling so much like a trespasser in their bed, all combine to draw most of the remaining tension from her.

Half-lulled into sleep, Garrus strokes her shoulder from a million miles away and murmurs, “Happy Christmas, Shepard.”


End file.
